Fairtrade goes bananas
Saturday, March 17th, 2007 by Nigel
Ben Clowney has completed his week as Fairtrade Man, consuming only Fairtrade food and drink for fourteen days straight. Lots of nuts. Lots of bananas. Quite a bit of coffee, I should imagine. It was a nice stunt, even if he was reduced - at one point - to eating muesli fried in red wine.
Yum.
I think Fairtrade is brilliant. The shame of the system is that supermarkets have identified Fairtrade buyers as thick-walleted middle-class do-gooders who’re willing to shell out more to ease their consciences. The sorry irony is that stores tend to put a bigger mark up on Fairtrade goods because they know we’ll cough up, meaning that for the moment, only a minority of consumers can afford to buy the marvellous stuff. If supermarkes weren’t so relentlessly cynical and priced ethical goods as competitively as ordinary goods, ironically far more farmers would benefit. But as The Money Program pointed out a year ago, most of the mark up goes to the supermarket, not the producers.
That’s not a reason not to buy Fairtrade, of course. And it would be naive to expect supermarkets to operate differently. But it is a reason to do something life-affirmingly petty every time you go to Tescos, like leave your shopping trolley as far away from the return area as possible. Or possibly not even shop there at all.
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