another fair trade post :) - a just world

Fair Trade Chocolate

Ask a person about their favourite sweet thing to eat, and they’ll probably say its chocolate.

People all around the world love chocolate.

They love it so much that EVERY year they eat more chocolate than any other sweet.

But this is bad news for the people that produce the cacao beans (cocoa beans). Every year major chocolate companies like Cadburys and Nestlé get cacao beans at cheap prices. This leaves the farmers with almost no money whatsoever for their production and to provide for their families. But there is a way out of poverty for the cacao farmers. That way out is through fairer trade practises.

Most chocolate is full of guilt, about mine (and yours!) continued oppression of the third world. You should make every purchase thinking about what you would buy if the labels told you how much the person suffered to make it and stuff like that. If we think about purchasing things in a fair way, I’m sure more people would be rushing toward fair trade products and organic produce.

Fair trade on Close Up!

On Monday night, I watched a section on Close Up about fair trade chocolate and coffee etc. I learned the following:-

With fair trade the people get $600 from their cocoa beans, but people who didn’t get paid fair prices get $44 - $158 per year.

In England Co-op had a 20% increase in sales when they swapped their name-brand coffee, tea and chocolate products entirely to fair trade products.

4% of starbucks coffee is fair trade, and Esquires is totally (100%) fair trade.

Fair trade is guilt free shopping. We need to put more thought into what we are buying.

Fair Trade is the trading alternative for a just world.

Hope