Reasons to buy Fairtrade

Part two of an occasional series, taken from the pages of the book by Miles Litvinoff and John Madeley.
Pay Small-Scale Farmers a Fairer Price - Fairtrade raises incomes of small scale farmers and boosts local economies. The fairtrade farm-gate price is the key to a better life for hundreds of thousands of families.

This is also an issue closer to home - here in mid-Wales local farmers and the big supermarkets have an unequal relationship, with the power in the hands of the supermarkets.
On the world stage, the world banana trade is dominated by five transnational companies - Dole, Del Monte, Chiquita, Fyffes and Noboa. They grow bananas on huge plantations, with low wages and often dangerous working conditions, with a high level of pesticide use (and lack of safety clothing, for example, for the sprayers). The small, family-run farms on the Caribbean can't compete with the low prices of the transnationals - unless they turn to Fairtrade, where they get a guarenteed minimum price for their crops.
Supporting small producers helps women disproportionately, as they are often the majority of the smallest farmers, and helps communities to send their children to school and to afford medical care without worrying about crippling debt.

Reasons to Buy Fairtrade

I realise I'm probably preaching to the converted by posting this here, but I've just come across the book "50 Reasons to Buy Fairtrade", and I'd like to share, one reason at a time.
Reason 1. Back a system that benefits the poor. The mainstream trading system is failing the poor. Fairtrade offers partnership in place of exploitation.
The poorest countries do not benefit from 'free' trade - while Western nations are making huge profits, African nations have a shrinking economy, at about 0.8% a year, even though many valuable raw materials come out of Africa.
Millions of small scale farmers have been driven to bankrupcy as a result of subsidised food from the West being 'dumped' in their countries, undercutting their prices.
Throughout the developing world people are working in poor countries for less than a dollar a day to make goods such as clothes and toys for the Western world. Often these goods carry prestigious brand names and sell for high prices. But wages for the people who make them are rock bottom and working conditions are often appalling.
Fair trade gives the poor who actually make the products a better deal.