Lamine Koulibaly is a mango farmer in the small village of Koloko in Burkina Faso, West Africa, close to the border with the Ivory Coast. He has a 25-hectare farm and grows two varieties of mango, Kent and Keitt, which are sold in the UK.
Koulibaly is president of the UDPFK (Union Departementale des Producteurs Fruitiers de Koloko), which represents more than 300 organic Fairtrade mango growers in Burkina Faso. The group collectively decides how to spend the Fairtrade premium - the sum included in the price of all Fairtrade goods that goes straight back to the farmers’ organisations. The Fairtrade price that farmers like Koulibaly receive must be at least the Fairtrade minimum price, plus an additional Fairtrade premium of around 10-15 per cent of the Fairtrade price.
Last year, they decided to use the premium to buy a motorbike to make it easier to share information between the farmers on their small plots of land.
“The roads in this region are very bad,” explains Koulibaly. “There are lots of holes in the roads and while it is not always easy to get around by car, we can reach farmers using the motorbike. The motorbike is also used to take a doctor or a nurse to an isolated village or to transport sick people from these villages.”
If you ask Koulibaly what Fairtrade means to him, his excitement is clear. “This is really something miraculous,” he says. “I never thought anything like the Fairtrade premium existed, but the proof stands right here, right in front of us. The fair price we receive for our mangoes also means that I can clothe all my children decently, I can provide medical care, I can send them all to school and I can feed them. In the past, we just had to see how we could get by. Now they are all getting an education, which means hope for the future.”
When farmers like Koulibaly want to enter the Fairtrade system, they first form a co-operative so that they can apply for Fairtrade certification jointly. The next part of the process is to ensure that their farms meet Fairtrade standards, a process independently audited by FLO-CERT.
FLO (Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International) is the international body comprising the Fairtrade Foundation and its partner organisations around the world. It has overall responsibility for developing Fairtrade standards, supporting producers and operating global certification and auditing systems.
FLO is based in Bonn, Germany, and consists of two separate organisations. FLO International eV is a non-profit multi-stakeholder association involving 23 member organisations, of which 20 are labelling initiatives, across Europe, North America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. The other three members are regional producer networks in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, representing 632 Fairtrade-certified producer organisations in the south. FLO develops and reviews international Fairtrade standards and assists producers in accessing market opportunities.
The other organisation, FLO-CERT GmbH, is a limited company that co-ordinates all tasks and processes all information related to the inspection and certification of producers and traders. Operating independently of any other interests, it follows the international ISO standard for certification bodies (ISO 65).
Fairtrade standards comprise minimum social, economic and environmental requirements, which producers must meet to be certified, as well as progress requirements that encourage continuous improvement to develop farmers’ organisations or the situation of estate workers.
Once a producer group is certified, it needs to find a supplier who is licensed to carry the Fairtrade marque to import into the UK or another country with an existing Fairtrade market.
The Fairtrade marque is an independent consumer label that appears on UK products as a guarantee that they have been certified against internationally agreed Fairtrade standards and indicates that the product has been certified to give a better deal to the producers involved.
In Ghana, Bomarts Farms is about 50km from Nsawam, just north of Accra. The farm, which qualifies as an FLO ‘hired labour scheme’, produces pineapples and its success has encouraged it to diversify. Bomarts now has a mango farm in nearby Tafi Abuife, where the land is leased from the local tribal community. There are very few employment opportunities in regions outside Accra, but the farm’s benefits are many besides employment, such as helping to support secondary businesses, improvement of roads and electricity to surrounding areas.
Bomarts has been supplying Fairtrade product since 1998 and, from that time, the joint body has supported around 5,000 people from local communities, through the use of the Fairtrade premium. The joint body, made up of 150 workers, has chosen to use the Fairtrade premium in many ways, including an education sponsorship package to around 106 children of Bomarts workers. A new kindergarten building is also under construction for 80 children. The joint body has also given money to a nearby health clinic to provide anti-malaria tablets, mosquito nets and funding towards a new maternity facility. This, they hope, will go towards meeting the UN’s Millennium Development Goal to reduce infant and maternal mortality. Premium money has also been set aside for an employee loan scheme, through which workers have borrowed money to buy bicycles to provide much-needed transport.
At the mango farm, the first of the premium has gone towards extending a small health clinic, which was, until recently, a small, dark hut with a single bed that serviced as many as 6,000 people in the surrounding seven villages. Three new rooms have now been built, as well as a sheltered waiting area, and beds and equipment have been provided.
There are 20 Fairtrade-certified groups that grow mangoes from Peru, Brazil, Mexico, Senegal, Ivory Coast, South Africa, Bukino Faso, Haiti and Mali.
Overall, sales of Fairtrade products increased by 43 per cent in 2008, with some increases in the Fairtrade-certified fruit categories, mainly in exotic fruits. But fresh fruit buyers are telling the Fairtrade Foundation that they are finding it tough in the current economic situation, with consumers tightening their purse strings. However, survey after survey reveals that people are continuing to buy Fairtrade. TNS Worldpanel research, with real supermarket purchases of around 15,000 demographically weighted shoppers, shows that almost 18 million UK families bought Fairtrade goods in 2008.
Earlier this month, AccountAbility and The Co-operative launched new research, What Assures Consumers in an Economic Downturn?, and 44 per cent of those questioned said Fairtrade labelling has helped inform their purchasing decisions in the last six months.
Recent research by GlobeScan on European shopping habits shows that nearly half of UK consumers are ethically active, with high expectations of corporate responsibility.The UK has the highest level of awareness, with 82 per cent of people saying that they recognise the Fairtrade marque. Of these people, 94 per cent say they trust the Fairtrade marque. More than three-quarters of shoppers - 77 per cent - believe that Fairtrade has strict standards, and the same amount of shoppers again believe that independent certification is the best way to verify a product’s ethical claims.
Times are tough for producer groups such as UDPFK and Bomarts, which are finding it increasingly difficult to meet rising fuel, fertiliser and food costs. Any decline in orders would be a disaster as access to credit is also becoming harder than ever.
Harriet Lamb, executive director of the Fairtrade Foundation, says: “The key risk may be a possible jangling of buyers’ nerves being distracted from the ethical agenda by a focus on price. But to date, companies are holding firm and the bottom line is that Fairtrade works - for vulnerable smallholders and consumers, and so for companies.”
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