FAIRTRADE SUCCESS HELPS DISADVANTAGED PRODUCERS

The Fairtrade Certification Mark is a certification logo and a registered trademark of Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO). This independent consumer label appears on products as a guarantee that disadvantaged producers are getting a better deal.

Today, more than five million people, farmers, workers and their families across 58 developing countries, benefit from the international Fairtrade system.

New figures released this month reveal that global sales of Fairtrade certified products reached the US$1.3 billion mark in 2005. This represents an increase of 37% over 2004.

All product lines expanded their markets, especially Fairtrade coffee in the United States (+ 70,9%) and the U.K. (+ 34%), bananas in Austria (46%) and sugar in France (125%). Non-food products did well too: sales of Fairtrade flowers, newly introduced last year in Canada, Germany and Belgium surpassed even the most optimistic expectations. Thanks to continued strong sales in Switzerland and the UK, a total of 113 million stems of Fairtrade flowers were sold in 2005.

The speed at which sales are growing shows an increasing demand from consumers for a positive model of trade which is fairer and more sustainable for farmers, and is helping them to bring development to their communities.

Significant worldwide growth shows that more and more producers, traders and licensees trust the Fairtrade Certification Mark and look to join the system. Increasingly companies are knocking on the door of the labelling organizations because they want to have the Cer­tification Mark on their products. In only one year, from 2004 to 2005, the number of licensees offering Fairtrade Certified products in­creased by 29%.

One of the more recent companies to join is Marks and Spencer, one of the largest food and clothing retailers in the UK. The entire range of Marks & Spencer’s coffee and tea, tota­lling 38 lines, switched to Fairtrade in a move that is estimated to increase the value of all Fairtrade instant and ground coffee sold in the UK supermar­kets by 18%, and increase the value of Fairtrade tea by approximately 30%. Marks and Spencer is one of several companies around the world that have become involved in Fairtrade in 2005, representing a growth of 29% from 1151 in 2004 to 1483 licensees in 2005.

The increase in the Fairtrade range and Fairtrade sales means that more producer organizations are able to sell to the Fairtrade market. Globally, the number of certified producer organizations has grown by 127% since 2001 to 508 groups in 58 countries and the number of registered traders has increased by 132% in the same period.

“The Fairtrade system encourages farmers in Africa, Asia and Latin America to organise into democratically run groups and implement changes in agricultural practice. This ensures that the gradual improvements which Fairtrade makes possible are sustainable, giving communities a real chance to build a brighter future”, says Luuk Zonneveld of the Fairtrade Labelling Organization.

Lionel Louw, Board Member of Heiveld Cooperative in South Africa explains the cooperative has improved the farmers’ standards of living. Fairtrade helped to make the smallholders independent from wholesalers and white neighbouring farmers. Smallholders can now buy their own equipment for tea production, such as their own tea-chopping machine and their own tea court, and subsequently don’t have to pay for the use the facilities of other farms any longer.

Joel Uribe and Luis Villaroel, from COASBA, a honey producer cooperative in Chile, explain: “We could have never further developed COASBA without Fairtrade. Now we have a regular income and the raised earnings mean we can plan and invest in our business. We are able to improve production processes and standards, and have even created several new jobs in our community, like for Maria-José Cordoba, a young woman who runs our small office in the plaza.“

Fairtrade is investing ever more resources back into producer organizations, and in 2005 set up the Producer Business Unit to increase the support to Fairtrade-certified producer organizations. The Unit brought together the previous Product Managers and Producer Support structures within Fairtrade, and now numbers 10 people in Bonn, Germany, and a growing number of locally based “Liaison Officers”.

Thanks to a partnership with the Dutch business advisory organization SNV, the number of liaison officers on the ground has increased to 25 and a further 5 will be recruited by the end of this year. It is expected that 370 producer organizations, representing 600,000 families, will benefit from the cooperation between SNV and Fairtrade.

You can read more about the work of Fairtrade Licensing Organization at www.fairtrade.net

Photo credits: The Fairtrade Foundation