Minister for trade and development Gareth Thomas has called on UK retailers to boost the amount of business they conduct with developing countries.
Speaking at Fairtrade pioneer AgroFair’s annual shareholders’ meeting last week, he said: “UK supermarkets turn over around £100 billion each year. Of this, they spend less than three per cent - £2.7bn in 2006 - on products from developing countries. We want to see this increase dramatically. In product categories like freshly prepared fruit and vegetables - products that provide livelihoods for farmers and jobs for processors - we want to see UK retailers double the value of their trade with developing countries by 2015.”
Peter Marks, ceo of The Co-operative Group, a supermarket that has championed the Fairtrade cause and achieved several Fairtrade firsts to market since the early 1990s, said that achieving a balance between ethics and economics is key. “We are in a tough competitive world - expecting the consumer to pay a premium for poor quality is no good.
“A lot of consumers don’t understand exactly what Fairtrade means, so there needs to be a much stronger message. We need to get the stories behind Fairtrade out there among the British public. If we got that out to a wider audience, sales would improve.
“The Fairtrade revolution is an ethical opportunity for The Co-op, and we will continue to grasp it with both hands, so that both producers around the world and our customers will benefit,” he added.
Fruit producers from across Africa and Latin America came to London last week to help steer the future direction of AgroFair, as well as visit UK farmers in the Lake District. The Fairtrade system is vitally important for farmers in terms of securing a guaranteed minimum price for fruit, empowering communities and ensuring the rights and privileges of workers, Anthony Blay of Ghanaian Fairtrade banana producer Volta River Estates told the floor, but there is always room for improvement. “We want to increase market share for Fairtrade fruit, and see periodic reviews of Fairtrade pricing to compensate for increasing costs of production,” he said. “We would also like to make the costs of certification and inspection affordable for producers, and make the ethical standards more applicable to a producer setting.”
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