Fairtrade comes from the niche

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Coffee, cocoa, or cotton to produce and to live the good life? For many farmers, this is still a utopia. However, the demand for fair trade products is rising. Sabine Kinkartz reported.

77 cents for a kilogram of a Euro for a T bananas-Shirt, less than three Euro for a pack of coffee: In German shopping streets such prices are not uncommon. “Bananas are not grown in Germany since 20 years, more expensive,” notes Dieter Overath, CEO of Transfair Germany.

Subsistence income were not achieved in the case of such prices for the farmers. Overath has for many years for fair trade. It is not just about pay producers a certain minimum price, but also about social and ecological Standards are adhered to.

19 Euro for fair trade products

With coffee, the first food with the Fairtrade mark came in 1992 in the shelves. Meanwhile, more than 7,000 products nationwide in the five major categories of coffee, bananas, cocoa, cut roses and textiles, the green-blue-black Fairtrade Logo. Worldwide, more than 1.6 million farmers in the Fairtrade programmes today.

This is only possible because the demand in the buyer countries is rising continuously. In 2005, sales of Fairtrade products in Germany amounted to 50 million euros. In the past year, there were 1.6 billion euros. Every German was in 2018, an average of 19 euros for products with the Fairtrade seal of approval.

Roses and cocoa in front

Sales in the food retail trade, which in Germany are around € 123 billion, as measured by the total appears to be low. So you should not expect, however, says Dieter Overath. “This is a false comparison, because our share of milk, meat and yogurt is not equal to Zero, because these products come from the global South and that’s where we concentrate.”

The largest market share of fair trade cut-flower with 28 percent. 427 million stems counters were last year. A Plus of five percent. Fairtrade bananas reached with 92,000 sold tons of a share of six per cent, but this could develop significantly. In the past year, the Discounter Lidl has announced that in the future, only fair trade bananas to sell. The conversion is running, the rate is already at 40 percent.

Corporations come under Declaration printer

The sale of fair-trade coffee has increased in the past year to 20,000 tons, sales grew by eleven percent. Overath stresses, however, the coffee farmers increasingly suffered from low market prices and crop failures due to climate change. Currently, the world market price for green coffee is far below what is sustainable crop production is necessary. Young people would not turn away from agriculture, because you can of your life.

The prices for green beans are as low as never

It looks better in cocoa also because companies such as Ferrero, Lambertz, or the Riegelein-started group, a part of their cocoa beans for chocolate production of Fairtrade-producers. The sales increased compared to the previous year by 48 per cent to 55,000 tonnes. “The impact that Fairtrade has, in the meantime, is even larger than the pure market share,” says Overath. “The companies that do not act in a fair, increasingly explanation of pressure as they ran in the global supply chains operate and how fair or not fair, you are spot on.”

What is the policy?

Nevertheless, a lot of air is still to the top. “Fair trade is growing, but it’s not growing fast enough,” Overath. An export-oriented country like Germany should also continue as an importer, at fair prices, he claims. “Why not have a banana, which is grown to 10,000 kilometers away, on the same terms and conditions as what we are living here in our work as a matter of course?”

Dieter Overath (centre) with the annual report, in addition to Maria Flachsbarth by the Ministry of development and Thilo Hoppe (R) of Fairtrade

A view that is also shared in the policy. It must be ensured that at the beginning of the global chains of minimum ecological and social standards are respected in Europe long ago, of course, calls Gerd Müller, Federal Minister for economic cooperation and development. In the coalition agreement, the CDU and the SPD have agreed a “binding social, human rights and environmental Standards in EU trade, investment and economic partnership agreements” to comply with.

Armed to the supply chain act

However, currently, the “National action plan on business and human rights” (NAP) relies on the principle of voluntariness. Since this works only insufficiently or not at all, threatens the Minister, in the meantime, to ensure compliance with human rights Standards for companies along the global supply to force chains, if necessary. Such legal regulation is within the coalition, however, is controversial.

Fairtrade Minister Müller gets in this regard, however, support. “We are in favour of legal provisions and we are sure that all trade is fair and sustainable, and at some point once the TRANS is not fair at all necessary,” says Dieter Overath.