Going bananas: … the latest fair-trade launch

New Internationalist, April, 2000 by Harriet Lamb

Banana traders have always taken a strange pride in their cut-throat reputation. Now they are faced by consumers all over Europe demanding fruit that carries the fair-trade label. In January, Britain joined eight other countries selling Fairtrade Mark bananas, with the Co-op and Sainsbury's the first supermarkets to stock them, and others set to follow suit. Terry Hudghton, Marketing Manager at the Co-op, which is stocking fair-trade bananas from Costa Rica and Ghana, says: `Britain is going bananas about bananas. But many people are unaware of the misery which can lie behind their best-loved fruit. We're committed to selling fair-trade products wherever and whenever we can.'

The British launch is a much-needed boost for fair-trade banana producers, who all met together for the first time in the autumn of last year in Brussels, scene of so much political wrangling over the banana trade. Enrique Grijalba, President of Coopetrabasur in Costa Rica, said: `We need the supermarkets to do more work promoting fair trade to consumers.'

Since their launch in the Netherlands in late 1996, sales of fair-trade bananas have climbed steadily, with figures for 1999 indicating a further rise of 20 per cent. The record-breaker is the Swiss Co-op, where 20 per cent of all bananas sold now carry a fair-trade label. But even these impressive figures fall far short of the needs of the 12 registered fair-trade producers. They face an uphill task surviving in a competitive market dominated by a handful of multinationals.

Throughout the summer of 1999, as prices fell to historic lows, many small farmers outside the fair-trade system were forced out of business, while others had their contracts with multinational companies cancelled. `Fair trade is the reason that the small farmers in our association still have a livelihood at all,' said Jorge Ramirez, President of an Ecuadorian co-operative of small farmers. Meanwhile, farmers in the Windward Islands are also pinning their hopes on fair trade to help them survive, as the WTO rules remove their access to European markets.

Consumers are clearly keen. A European Commission survey found that three-quarters of those questioned would buy fair-trade bananas if they were available in shops alongside ordinary ones, and 37 per cent would pay ten-per-cent extra.

Deris Ariza, a cooperative farmer with less than one hectare of bananas in Colombia, underlined the benefits fair trade can deliver in just one year: `Without the premium price, we would not be farming still. Farmers here are getting prices that do not cover their costs. We, however, have been able to cut fertilizer use by half and started using animal manure. We have stopped using herbicides and the ground-cover between plants is now attracting back the wildlife. We have also built a kindergarten for 120 children and organized waste collection in the community. We hope soon to have piped drinking water for the first time.'

Everyone is hoping that the new sales in Britain, and the plans being laid for future launches in countries like Canada, will help ensure that such benefits can be guaranteed into the future.

For further information contact Harriet Lamb at FairTrade Labelling Organisations International (FLO); Tel: 49 228 949 2322, E-mail: h.lamb@fairtrade.net Or the Fairtrade Foundation in London; Tel: 44 207 405 5942.