FAIR TRADE: WHAT IS IT AND WHY SHOULD I CARE?

How Fair Trade Organizations Differ from Commercial Importers

• Their goal is to benefit the artisans they work with, not maximize profits. By reducing the number of middlemen and minimizing overhead costs, FTOs return up to 40 percent of the retail price of an item to the producer.
  
• They work with producer co-operatives that use democratic principles to ensure that working conditions are safe and dignified, and that producers have a say in how their products are created and sold. Co-operatives are encouraged to provide benefits such as health care, child care and access to loans.
  
• They encourage producers to reinvest their profits into their communities. Many producers who work with FTOs have committed time and money to build health clinics and support other community projects in their villages.
  
• Some Fair Trade Organizations work to shift processing and packaging activities to the developing world, so that as much work as possible will remain in the producer country. Often, such activities are performed abroad, depriving the neediest countries of the opportunity to boost their incomes.

Fair Trade Facts

• Worldwide, fair trade sales total $400 million each year.
  
• In North America, fair trade retail sales totaled $35 to 40 million in 1998.
  
• Of $3.6 trillion of all goods exchanged globally, fair trade accounts for only .01%.
  
• Fair trade businesses return 1/3 to 1/4 of profits back to producers in developing countries.
  
• According to the National Labor Committee, a Haitian sewing clothing for the U.S. market may earn less than 1% of the retail price.
  
• Sales for Ten Thousand Villages, the largest fair trade organization in the United States, grew from nearly $3 million in 1985 to nearly $12 million in 1998. Ten Thousand Villages' Canadian operations reported another $3 million. Combined, that represents the creation of the equivalent of 12,500 full-time jobs for disadvantaged artisans and farmers.
  
• Of its $5.2 million in sales for 1998, SERRV International returned nearly $2 million directly to producers.
  
• North American consumers pay $4 to $11 a pound for coffee bought from growers for about 80 cents a pound. Growers who sell to fair trade organizations earn $1.12 to $1.26 a pound.
  
• Sixty to seventy percent of the artisans providing fair trade hand-crafted products are women. Often these women are mothers and the sole wage earners in the home.