How Does Fair Trade Fit?
What is Fair Trade?: Fair Trade is a social movement that seeks to promote better equity for farmers in developing countries. Farmers get together and form a collective so that they have more resources, education and power. This results in better trade agreements with international countries, a better program for sustainability and better wages for their goods. These goods are often crops including but not limited to cocoa, coffee, cotton, bananas, tea and a host of other products made with a combination of materials for the consumer market. Receiving a fair wage for your goods allows farmers to pay decent wages to those working on the farm. The movement is growing every year!
Why Fair Trade isn't enough right now. As I mentioned over the last 14 years we have seen a large increase in awareness of and demand for Fair Trade goods. This is wonderful and Slave Free Chocolate is VERY pro Fair Trade. If all farms were Fair Trade from the beginning, then we wouldn't be in this mess. To date, only about 5% of cocoa comes from a fair trade certified farm. It is much less likely that a fair trade certified farm will be using child slave so Slave Free Chocolate considers Fair Trade Chocolate ethically sourced. Some countries, especially those in Central America have restrictions against co-operatives but there is no slavery going on there anyway. Regardless, getting these children out of servitude, the medical attention that they need and reinserted into their families and back to school is not part of the infrastructure of the Fair Trade system. Remediation is the responsibility of those whom have been profiting from slavery over the last 30 years, the candy companies.
