Banana Farmers in Dominica are turning their backs on Fairtrade. According to Mitchell Roberts, chairman of the National Fairtrade Organisation of Dominica;
“The cost of inputs escalated, the cost of packaging material escalated, labour has always been a high cost and because of that farmers feel that they were not making money and their cost of production is high and the returns they get was not reflective of the amount of effort they put, so some farmers definitely had to leave it.”
The blame is being laid at supermarkets doors as they fail to stock fair-trade products in significant enough numbers to meet the higher production costs. Fairtrade relies on the support of retailers to sell products that are made fairly and ethically, without this support farmers are forced to go back to less ethical methods of production in order to ensure larger orders and reliable income.
We all need to take a little more responsibility and ask that our supermarkets to stock more ethically sourced products. We need to also buy the ethical alternative to support farmers’ in developing countries and ensure the future of Fairtrade products.
Posted By Nina
"Did you ever stop to think that you can't leave for your job in the morning without being dependent on most of the world? You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over for the sponge, and that's handed to you by a Pacific islander. You reach for a bar of soap, and that's given to you at the hands of a Frenchman. And then you go into the kitchen to drink your coffee for the morning, and that's poured into your cup by a South American. And maybe you want tea: that's poured into your cup by a Chinese. Or maybe you're desirous of having cocoa for breakfast, and that's poured into your cup by a West African. And then you reach over for your toast, and that's given to you at the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention the baker. And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you've depended on more than half the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren't going to have peace on Earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality."
- christmas sermon 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr.
