Fairtrade.

Some of you might know that it’s currently Fairtrade Fortnight (22nd February - 7th March) and that this year’s Fairtrade Fortnight is promoting something called The Big Swap. The Big Swap is basically to encourage people to swap stuff that they usually consume for its Fairtrade alternative. The aim is to achieve one million and one swaps by the end of the fortnight. I thought I’d write a little blog about it because Fairtrade is pretty important to me. I don’t want to be super preachy and militant so I’ll just tell you why I personally buy Fairtrade stuff.

I think it was seven-ish years ago when I was fourteen or fifteen that I stopped drinking tea and coffee that wasn’t Fairtrade and eating chocolate bars that weren’t Fairtrade. I sort of twisted my mum’s arm about it because she couldn’t see her little boy going without his mug of tea in the morning, therefore she had to fall in line. She tried to wriggle out of it by fussing that it was more expensive and that she could only get it in the Co-op, whereas she preferred to shop in other places. I ground her down though and the Leighfield household went Fairtrade. To be fair, only consuming Fairtrade tea and coffee seven years ago was a bit of a ballache. It wasn’t super expensive by any means, but my mother is a frugal woman and loves her BOGOF deals, so it was certainly sufficiently annoying.

However, it’s been exciting to see the huge changes that have happened in just seven years. Every supermarket now stocks Fairtrade tea and coffee at the very least. The most exciting thing about that change is that it was brought on by falling sales for non-Fairtrade companies as consumers sought an ethical alternative to their usual shopping habits. Power to the people, etc. In recent months, Cadbury’s have made their Dairy Milk bars Fairtrade certified, as have Nestle with Kit Kat. Admittedly, it’s sad that these companies had to be backed into a corner before making these changes (for fear of losing yet more profits) and that each company is only making the cursory gesture of making just one of their products Fairtrade (some of my friends were trying to tell me that Cadbury’s had “gone Fairtrade” but I had to break it to them that it was only one of their chocolate bars), but it is progress nonetheless.

Furthermore, Ben and Jerry’s announced this week that all of their ice cream will be globally Fairtrade certified by 2013. Again, various articles on Ben and Jerry’s Fairtrade products reveal that consumers are buying their Fairtrade ice cream simply because it is Fairtrade. Consumers actually want to shop ethically, meaning that it is not only a responsible choice for a business to go Fairtrade, but that it is commercially viable and profitable for a business. Read more.

So, why should we “go Fairtrade”? The problem I sometimes have with Fairtrade on a personal level is that it often feels quite hopeless. After all, what effect does one solitary person or household changing their buying habits have on farmers on the other side of the world? I guess the changes in the last seven years alone are testament to the fact that we can alter the way things are. Or, if I’m buying a Fairtrade chocolate bar in the Co-op for 55p and bemoaning the fact that I could get a Mars bar for 45p, then I think about what I would do if the cocoa farmers who grew the cocoa were literally right there watching me. Would I buy a Mars bar? To me, that seems like I would be spitting in the farmer’s face. I find it offensive.

“But we can’t just stop buying products from Nestle, Cadbury’s and Mars because those farmers won’t get paid and won’t be able to feed their families.” Trufax. But at the moment, those farmers who work for non-Fairtrade companies are getting paid a pittance wage that a) doesn’t reflect the amount of work that they do, and b) doesn’t provide enough money for those farmers to adequately provide even the most basic needs for their families. Imagine if your dad worked on a farm, labouring from 5.00 in the morning until 7.00 at night and then came home with £15 to pay the mortgage, and feed and clothe your family. Don’t take any of those figures as gospel truth because I don’t claim to be clever enough to understand the intricacies, numbers and figures of the situation. But you get the general idea. If we make the switch from buying from those companies, and instead buy the Fairtrade alternative, the farmers that work for the Fairtrade companies will be getting paid an amount that more accurately reflects their needs. It still won’t be a huge amount, but it will be more. And as the demand for Fairtrade increases, those companies will be able to take on more farmers who presently work for Cadbury’s et al, enabling them to be paid more and provide better for their families.

I also think that it’s important to remember that in the western world, we are generally very, very rich. I am assuming that everyone reading this blog is wearing clothes, has a roof over their head, and will eat three meals today (and presumably has a computer.) That is rich. That is comfortable. That is far more than most people have. I can’t comment for anyone else, but I’m typing on a laptop that cost upwards of £700, I have a wall of CDs opposite me that I would hate to estimate the cost of (undoubtedly in the thousands), not to mention a keyboard, two amplifiers, a CD player, a record player, so many books that I buy and don’t get around to reading, a TV, a DVD player, an organ, more DVD box-sets than you can shake a stick at, a wardrobe full of clothes (literally full), nine pairs of shoes (why do I have nine pairs of shoes?!) The list goes on. I have so much stuff that it makes me feel ill. I have more stuff than I could ever use. Some of you will have more ‘stuff’, some will have less, but I’m guessing that we all have a lot of crap that we don’t need. Yet we quibble about spending an extra 20p to buy Fairtrade coffee rather than Nescafe. How much further does that 20p go in Ghana I wonder? Probably substantially further than two Freddo’s in Spar.

We save pennies on our shopping that would go so, so far on the other side of the world. If you bought the Fairtrade alternative to tea, coffee, sugar, honey, chocolate, bananas, melons and all the other products for which there is a Fairtrade alternative for the rest of this year, how much extra would it cost? When I was a student, I bought Fairtrade stuff where possible and I reckon it probably cost me an extra £10 a year or something at most. Fairtrade tea and coffee is basically the same price as any other brand now, and I cut down on chocolate because you can only get Fairtrade chocolate in certain supermarkets. I think my biggest financial deficit was probably in the banana department. Those Fairtrade bananas are definitely a few pence more. Quelle horreur! So, at most, £10 extra for the year. One film at the cinema (with a bag of sweets.) Two CDs. A t-shirt. A book. £10 that I can probably afford to lose.

At the end of the day, choosing the Fairtrade alternative is your own decision. All I know is that if I go to a friend’s house and they give me Tetley’s tea, it’s no understatement to say that it breaks my heart a little bit. I used to go to church in my little town of Upton-upon-Severn whenever I had a free Sunday, but now I find it pretty hard to step through the door. Do you know why? It’s because I poked my head into the kitchen last time I was there to see the old ladies making tea and coffee. It was Yorkshire Tea and Nescafe. When I was younger I managed to persuade the church to go Fairtrade for a while, but it seems like they slipped back into their old ways. I asked my parents why the church had decided to stop buying Fairtrade, and they said it was because it was expensive and inconvenient. My church is five doors down from the Co-op. It’s not expensive, and it’s definitely not inconvenient. And this is a church! A level of hypocrisy that’s so great that I don’t even know where to begin.

My dream is that one day the world will be completely Fairtrade. Fairtrade makes sense. It is fair.

Fair - adjective

1. free from bias, dishonesty, or injustice.

2. legitimately sought, pursued, done.

3. neither excellent nor poor; moderately or tolerably good. (We are not even making the conditions for these farmers great; we are merely making them tolerable!)

I really hope this blog doesn’t come across as preachy or aloof, because that is not my intention at all. I just hope that it maybe inspires one person to think about the choices they make next time they’re in Sainsbury’s. It sounds cheesy, but we have the opportunity to change the world simply by what we put in our shopping basket. It may not be in a big way, but it helps. Fairtrade isn’t perfect. It isn’t the whole answer. It is flawed. But then again, life is flawed. Life is pretty hard and there is a lot of stuff wrong with the world. I just think that when I’m faced with the simple decision of buying PG Tips or Traidcraft tea, that I should buy Traidcraft. For me, it’s the right thing to do.

A couple of quotes from people far wiser and more knowledgeable than myself to finish up:

“We can do no great things, just small things with great love. It is not how much you do, but how much love you put into doing it.” Mother Teresa

‘What we are doing may seem insignificant, but it is most important that we do it.” Gandhi

“We are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside […] but one day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that a system that produces beggars needs to be repaved. We are called to be the Good Samaritan, but after you lift so many people out of the ditch you start to ask, maybe the whole road to Jericho needs to be repaved.” Dr. Martin Luther King

Those three quotes, and much of the thinking behind this blog, has been sourced from a wonderful book called ‘The Irresistible Revolution’ by Shane Claiborne. I would highly recommend that you read it.

If you decide to swap one of your usual purchases for its Fairtrade alternative, then please register your swap at The Big Swap.

If you have any comments or questions about this blog, then just leave a comment or send me an email on luke [at] lukeleighfield [dot] com. Don’t ask me any tough questions though because I don’t know very much. Google probably knows more.