Fairtraders unveil Grown By Women products

TODAY the market for Fairtrade products in the UK is worth more than £1bn a year – and the demand is growing.

TODAY the market for Fairtrade products in the UK is worth more than £1bn a year – and the demand is growing.

However, it may surprise people to learn that the pioneers of the movement were a group of charity workers from Edinburgh who in 1979 hatched a scheme to import instant coffee from Tanzania.

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Marianne Hughes, one of the original founders of Campaign Coffee, now admits the original product tasted “rather unpleasant”.

“There were three of us who had been volunteers for VSO in the 1970s. Gwen Egginton and Steve Parish came across this instant coffee produced in Tanzania. We were all inspired by the idea of rather trade than aid.”

Hughes, Eggington and Parish ran their homegrown outfit from a kitchen table in Gloucester Place.

“You would never be allowed to get away with that sort of thing today,” says Hughes.

Despite its humble beginnings, Campaign Coffee marked the birth of a new consumer trend.

These days, Fairtrade is an internationally recognised mark, which rather than being associated with rather nasty instant coffee is now more commonly linked with top-end and luxury labels.

And the Edinburgh company which grew from the original kitchen table coffee company is also thriving. Equal Exchange, which runs out of a waterfront office in Leith, is now the biggest importer of Fairtrade organic products in the UK. It imports from 14 countries and prides 
itself on maintaining the original principles of what became the fairtrade movement.

The company sells 100 tonnes of coffee a year and 3.5 tonnes of rooibos. It supplies supermarkets, including the Co-operative and Sainsbury’s. Turnover last year was £3.5 million.

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As well as importing coffee, tea, sugar and olive oil under the Fairtrade mark, the company also imports raw materials such as honey and oils, which are sold to Boots and Neal’s Yard as ingredients in cosmetics. It is also an importer of top quality, single-estate Palestinian olive oil.

Managing director Senga Gall, who has been with the company 13 years, says it is the kind of job which “becomes your life”.

On any given day Gall may be exchanging emails with a Nicuraguan coffee farmer, neg­otiating a new contract with a supermarket or keeping an eye on the price of raw materials in the global commodities market.

Pictures of farmers in Uganda, Nicaragua and Peru decorate the walls of their riverside offices in Leith while the clocks on the wall tell the time in Costa Rica, Bolivia and Brazil.

Sales director Heather Baird, a former theatre company manager who became interested in the fairtrade movement after working in Africa, says: “I think you still feel like the the people you are dealing with are your friends.”

Baird and Gall have both travelled to Palestine to witness at first hand the challenges faced by olive farmers there. “It is shocking because it should not be a poor country,” says Gall.

The company will be using Fairtrade Fortnight to highlight its range of Grown by Women products – a new initiative to ensure that women agricultural workers are rewarded for their work.

Sales director Baird says: “Eighty-five per cent of farming work in the world is done by women. But often the money ends up being controlled by the men.”

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As well as getting a premium for Fairtrade products, Equal Exchange also now pays extra for products produced by women.

For every tonne of coffee bought £200 goes to fund social projects which must be chosen by female agricultural workers.

In Uganda, the women’s premium funds an educational drama group, in Peru, money has been used to buy new more efficient stoves for domestic dwellings while in Nicuragua the female farmers chose to fund a mobile cervical screening unit which serves all the women in the area.

Baird says: “There is a lot of evidence that when women do receive money for the work they do they tend to spend it very wisely.”

Some of the stories behind the Grown By Women products will be featured in a series of films made to celebrate Fairtrade Fortnight. The ReelReals films will be released on the Equal Exchange website and showcased at an event at Summerhall in Edinburgh on 10 March.

Working closely with small suppliers has given Baird and Gall great insight into the issues faced by growers in developing countries and the duo are part of a cross-party working group convened by the Scottish Government to advise on the best way to support Fairtrade initiatives around the world.

Although Baird and Gall agree the growth in demand for Fairtrade products has been a good thing, they feel there is a danger it has become “all about price” and that some of the benefits for small farmers have been lost.

In areas such as South Africa, Fairtrade International, the body which licenses the use of the mark, has licensed Fairtrade plantations, which have eroded demand from smaller farmers.

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Sometimes, but not always, the demands of supermarkets for greater quantities can lead to smaller suppliers being squeezed out – which some would say goes against the original principles of the Fairtrade movement.

It is one of the reasons Heather Baird and Senga Gall are keen to promote their Grown By Women range of products. Consumers who buy these are not only buying Fairtrade but can be sure the money is going to support those who need it most.

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