Fighting the Banana Wars and other Fairtrade Battles, by Harriet Lamb
Fair Trade has been around for a few years now and for most of us has had to share voice in the public domain with the competing virtues of organic, carbon-neutral, free-range and non-GM amongst others. If you want to know what it stands for, where it started, how it’s doing and what you can do to help, this is a book for you.
In it, Harriet Lamb - director of the Fair Trade Foundation - talks us first-hand through the journey of the movement from the banana fields of Central America to meetings with M&S via the successful launch of the first bar of Green and Blacks’ Maya Gold. It is a detailed diary of what she and the movement have had to face to get as far as they have done. There are some heart-rending accounts in here, of farmers who have either been made infertile by the pesticides they have been forced to use or have seen hideous deformation of their newly-born children. It s truly upsetting to read that something as simple as buying your bananas from Sainsbury’s instead of ASDA can have such a direct impact on the livelihood of others. And we’re talking about aspects of their lives which we would take for granted like basic health and water supply. One can’t help but feel that if we in the Western world knew of a group of countries who could dramatically improve on our welfare and levels of poverty with such simple acts as changing which brand they supported, wars would be waged without a second’s hesitation.
So, what can we do as consumers? Well Harriet has devoted a section at the back of the book to this - a concise ten step guide. I suspect that for those who choose to buy this book, those will be the most well-thumbed leaves. It’s simple, practical and empowering. Within a day of picking up this book (and not being a follower or dedicated supporter of the FT label), I had put to my company the idea of stocking FT coffee and tea in our kitchens and meeting rooms. After all, why not?
But should we change our habits? After all, doesn’t the market naturally find a happy medium where the consumer and the producer are both happy? And besides, we often want to put the best on our tables, in our mixing bowls and into our children’s packed lunches. It used to be that fair trade coffee was only drunk by the brave and those first bars of FT chocolate were as granular as the soil they came from (though I must confess I only know this by reputation as rumour was enough to put me off) but now this excuse is less valid. The supply and consumption of FT products have risen dramatically over the last decade so they must be doing something right.
A final question then; should you read this book? If you want to hear about fair trade, international relations or what the supermarkets are up to with farmers in developing nations from someone who has been at the heart of the action for over a decade, yes. It is quite detailed and at times either sad, stressful or a little dry - so for the rest of us doesn’t really represent holiday reading.
I think Harriet would much rather that you actively looked for the Fair Trade logo the next time you’re in the supermarket and gave it a go. You never know, you might even like it. And if you still feel that this isn’t enough to help struggling farmers in the developing world, I’ll leave you with a pearl of wisdom from Victor Perezgrovas, a Mexican farmer who when explaining fair trade to his own brethren simply replied “Many little raindrops in the mountains make the mighty rivers flow”.
To hear a podcast of the full lecture which Harriet held at the LSE in Feb ‘09, please follow the link below. It’s 1:30 and features Fairtrade Businessman Adam Brett and his Father Dr Teddy Brett who is a well known figure at the university.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/publicLecturesAndEvents.htm#generated-subheading1
Comments
2 Comments on Fighting the Banana Wars and other Fairtrade Battles, by Harriet Lamb
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Wicked Stepmother on
Mon, 2nd Mar 2009 7:35 pm
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James Appleby on
Wed, 4th Mar 2009 2:17 pm
You little devil you! When have you had the time to set this all up?
Just to let you know we’ve been buying FT tea and coffee for years!
xxx
Cadburys have just announced that Dairy Milk will be going fair trade by the end of summer 2009. This is massive news for the FT label and great news for growers in developing countries.
And there I was thinking that by buying-out Green&Blacks, the opposite would happen. Positive news for the future!
Tell me what you're thinking...
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