| |
*
"Fair
Trade is a market-based, entrepreneurial response to business as usual: it helps
third-word farmers developing direct market access as well as the organizational
and management capacity to add value to their products and take them directly
to the global market. Direct trade, a fair price, access to capital and local
capacity-building, which are the core strategies of this model, have been successfully
building farmers' incomes and self-reliance for more than 50 years."
~ Paul Rice |
| *
No
business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers
has any right to continue in this country. By living wages I mean more than a
bare subsistence level --I mean the wages of decent living.
--Franklin
Delano Roosevelt Goods
produced under conditions which do not meet a rudimentary standard to decency
should be regarded as contraband and not allowed to pollute the channels of international
commerce.
--Franklin
Delano Roosevelt |  |
"In our country
there was no tradition of fermenting cocoa. With Fair trade income we were able
to implement a fermentation program to improve the quality of our cocoa and to
convert our production to certified organic. This improved our position in the
export market. The Fair Trade market is a very important market for the survival
of our associates."
-- Isidoro de la Rosa, Executive Director of CONACADO
cocoa cooperative, Dominican Republic
"We're
not here at Equal Exchange just to be tools of farmers, but to explore what it
means to be of service. Business in our society has lost the notion--if it ever
had it--that it should do more than create wealth and move goods back and forth,
that it should be of service to greater society. ... We learn from the farmers
about life's basic priorities, about getting by with less, about living in harmony
with the earth. They learn from us about international business, the marketplace,
promotion and fina nce. Our customers hold the web together. As more take part,
the web grows stronger and we all gain hope from our exchanges. That's alternative
trade."
-- Jonathan Rosenthal, executive director, Equal Exchange
We
want to begin in working-class neighborhoods. We want to test the concept there,
because our idea is that fair trade should not just be for the elites, but for
everyone, for the majority, for the poor people. Quality food for poor people.
Why just quality for the rich? And at an equal price
-- Victor Sua´rez, Exective
Director, the National Association of Peasant Marketing Enterprises
*
When
you buy Fairtrade products you can guarantee that the farmers who have worked
hard to grow them get a minimum price. Fairtrade is a way of giving regular support
– and enjoying delicious high quality foods at the same time.
-- Emma
Thompson |  |
If Free Trade has
been so good to our standard of living, then WHY has our largest employer gone
from high union wage paying and benefits GM to low wage paying benefits skirting
Wal-Mart???
-- Barbara Toncheff
Fair
trade benefit many. From farmers in producer countries to students in a U.S. school
studying the environment, the concept and practice of fair trade connects producers
and consumers in new and powerful ways. It is the nexus for: meeting both environmental
and economic considerations of indigenous peoples; re-balancing the trading relationship
between North and South; building a link between U.S. policy and publics to a
larger world community that is knocking at the door
-- TransFair USA, 2002
"Thanks
to the Fair Trade market, our standard of living has substantially increased.
With your support, we look forward to a more promising future."
-- Miguel
Trigoso, Marketing Manager, APARM coffee cooperative, Peru
"Thanks
to Fair trade, we will not die of hunger. We will not lose our land. Our children
can attend school. I want to send thanks to all of the churches that purchase
our coffee. Thanks to you, we have a seed of hope in our lives."
-- Jose
Luis Castillo Vasquez, member of the Equal Exchange-supported Las Colinas cooperative,
El Salvador, and father of six
"With
Fair Trade we have an incentive to invest in social programs that benefit producers
and the community. We also receive higher incomes to sustain ourselves. If it
weren't for Fair Trade, we wouldn't exist as banana producers since the amount
we receive for a box of conventional bananas does not cover our expenses."
- Edinson Cabana Zapata, co-op member, ASOPROBAN banana cooperative, Colombia
