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Straight from www.transfairusa.org – Fair Trade Certification empowers farmers and farm workers to lift themselves out of poverty by investing in their farms and communities, protecting the environment, and developing the business skills neccesary to compete in the global marketplace. This means fair prices of goods, fair labor conditions, direct trade to importers, community developement, and sustainability for the farmer and the environment.
I personally started to notice this little icon on products a couple of years ago. I encourage and promote anything like this that is positive, progressive and works towards people being sustainable. People have lost the thought of being sustainable in life, and that is one thing lately that has been driving our planet and our people down the wrong path.
This logo could be on any type of product, so look around for it! Fair Trade helps individuals and communities get a chance in the market place. Impoverished people cannot typically compete in the global marketplace because big business has everything so industrialized that prices are too hard to compete with. Below is just one example of what Fair Trade could eventually change.
Straight from: http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/coffee/
Coffee industry in Crisis – Prices have plummeted and are currently around $.60-$.70 per pound. “With world market prices as low as they are right now, we see that a lot of farmers cannot maintain their families and their land anymore. We need Fair Trade now more than ever,” says Jerónimo Bollen, Director of Manos Campesinas, a Fair Trade coffee cooperative in Guatemala. Meanwhile coffee companies have not lowered consumer prices but are pocketing the difference.
“The drastic fall in coffee prices means, in two words, poverty and hunger for thousands of small producers in Latin America,” says Merling Preza Ramos, Director of PRODECOOP Fair Trade cooperative in Nicaragua. Learn more about the coffee crisis by reading Global Exchange’s statement. We believe in a total transformation of the coffee industry, so that all coffee sold in this country should be Fair Trade Certified, or if produced on a plantation, that workers’ rights should be guaranteed and independently monitored. Our view includes social justice and environmental sustainability: all coffee should be certified organic and shade grown where applicable.
Your support is needed, so please buy products that have the Fair Trade label! You will be supporting a great cause!