Domestic Fair Trade: For Health, Justice & Sustainability

[nosmokes]

a good read, and one that even offers some ideas for solutions. if you have the time i highly recommend that you sit with this one.
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original-OCA

Domestic Fair Trade: For Health, Justice & Sustainability

* By Erbin Crowell and Michael Sligh
Social Policy, February 2007

The international Fair Trade movement has gained momentum in recent years, mobilizing millions of people with a message of fairness, equity and environmental stewardship in global trade. Fair Trade, representing a convergence of co-operative, solidarity, and social justice movements, emphasizes commerce as a tool for the empowerment and capacity building of small-scale farmers, artisans and agricultural workers in the global South. For decades Fair Trade Organizations (FTOs) ­ mission-based enterprises based on the principles of fairness, equity, solidarity and community-development ­ have provided concerned consumers in the North the opportunity to link with and support producers in the South through equitable trading relationships. They have also provided a model that trade activists are now using in pressuring mainstream businesses to be more responsible, primarily through certification-based campaigns.

While it wasn't so long ago that the mainstream coffee industry dismissed the principles of Fair Trade as unrealistic, today there are some 400 companies purchasing at least a small portion of their coffee under Fair Trade terms. Other fairly traded products, such as tea, chocolate and fruit that were once available only in community food co-ops and Fair Trade shops, are beginning to show up on supermarket shelves.

Similarly, movements for organic and sustainable agriculture have moved from the margins and into the mainstream of consumer consciousness. Once the domain of small farmers, independent entrepreneurs and natural food co-ops, the organic industry now accounts for $20 billion dollars of global sales, and has attracted many major multinational companies into the marketing of organic products.

While these movements have much to be proud of, the obstacles faced by family farmers and agricultural workers have only become more severe ­ not just in the developing world, but in industrialized countries as well. While most people consider the problems of plantation labor to be an issue exclusive to marginalized economies, recent campaigns by farm labor organizations such as the Coalition of Immokalee Workers have exposed injustices on "factory farms" in Florida and other parts of the country. Meanwhile, recent press reports have drawn attention to the devastating psychological and social impact of globalization on rural communities in countries such as India, where suicide by small farmers has become a national crisis. Rarely mentioned is the fact that in many countries in the "developed" world, including the US and Canada, suicide is the leading cause of death among farmers.
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complete article article here