Smallholders Show at the Royal Welsh

The Fairtrade table in the Green Horizons hall at the Smallholders' Show this year is a Powys wide initiative. Today, everyone manning the stall had come from Hay, but tomorrow there will be people from Brecon and elsewhere.
We had Fairtrade chocolate from the Co-op and Divine for people to try (always good for encouraging people to stop and chat), and some campaign material about cotton subsidies. It seems that the EU subsidise cotton growers in Greece and Spain to the tune of seven billion euros every year (!!) even though they only produce 2% of the world's cotton. We had letters addressed to each of the four Welsh MEPs, to encourage them to vote against continuing this subsidy. Meanwhile, cotton growers in West Africa can actually produce their cotton more cheaply, but cannot compete with the subsidised cotton from the EU and the United States. One lady took a whole bunch of these letters to pass around her ladies' group! Another lady praised the Co-op for their labelling after having done a fact-finding mission with her local WI.
It was also encouraging to find that almost all of the children who stopped at the stall said they either belonged to a Fairtrade school, or had recently done a Fairtrade project at school or with the Scouts. Three teachers took leaflets to find out more about their school becoming a Fairtrade school, too.
In fact, the majority of people who stopped to chat already knew about Fairtrade and tried to buy Fairtrade products, though there were still plenty who didn't know that the label went much beyond coffee, chocolate and bananas.
And as you can see from the picture above, it wasn't just humans who were interested in Fairtrade. Here are some local gnomes receiving their Fairtrade stickers!

Bunting

On the Fairtrade Blog, there's a post by Harriet Lamb about the Fairtrade bunting that was decorated by supporters of FT all over the country - we did some here in the Buttermarket. It's been up on display in Battersea Park.
Harriet Lamb will be appearing at the Globe as a speaker in their HowTheLightGetsIn festival, which is on at the same time as Hay Festival. With Barry C Smith, Joanna Kavenna, John Naish and Robert Rowland-Smith, she'll be talking about The Famine and the Feast at noon on Sunday 29th May, and at 10.30am on Monday 30th May she'll be appearing on stage with Gideon Rachman, Bonnie Greer, Christopher Hamilton and Simon Glendinning for a discussion entitled The End of Abundance?

Future Events Planned

We haven't been idle - just catching our breaths after Fairtrade Fortnight.
Plans are now afoot for a community picnic at Hayfield Garden, in association with the Transition Towns group. The date is now set for Sunday 3rd July, from 12 noon to 4.30pm, with entertainment from Paul Hartley, our local 'gamester for hire', five-stick weaving, face painting, nature art, a plant sale and acoustic music. Anyone who would like to come should bring their own picnic, but teas and coffees (and possibly cake) will be available.
Meanwhile, at the Library, a photographic exhibition will be on display for two weeks from 30th June. This is an exhibition of celebrities wearing clothes made with Fairtrade cotton, and photographed by Trevor Leighton, a well-known portrait photographer.
There will also be a Fairtrade stall at the Green Horizons show at the Royal Welsh showground on the weekend of 21st/22nd May, and at the Royal Welsh Show itself in July. This will be a Powys-wide initiative from all the local Fairtrade Towns.

Photos

Here are some of the photos of the Fairtrade event at the Thursday market - the first is when we were advertising a reward for the finding of our letter 'F', and the second is when it was found for us!

Fairtrade Fortnight Events

Last year, the Fairtrade Hay group dressed up as tea ladies and gave out free cups of Fairtrade tea at the Thursday market. The market traders have been asking us if we'd repeat that generosity ever since!
This year the theme is cotton, though we still had some tea on the go. We also had items to display from several shops in Hay that sell Fairtrade goods, including some from the Co-op - and found that we couldn't display half of them because the wind kept blowing them away! Inside the Buttermarket, sheltered from the weather, we had bunting to decorate, and Jo promptly found a group of kids from Trewern Outdoor Pursuits Centre who were in town for the morning to decorate some of them. We also sent them off to look for part of our missing banner....
The original idea had been to have a giant Fairtrade washing line stretched right across the top of the market square, above the stalls. I went down with the washing line the night before the market, when the wind was already starting to blow up, and we decided it would be safer to string the banner across the front of the Cheesemarket building - giant Tshirts, knickers, shorts and socks, each with a letter sewn on to spell Fairtrade (only the letters were Fairtrade cotton - the rest was recycled).
When we arrived in the morning, the washing line had wound itself around one of the pillars of the Cheesemarket - and the 'F' was missing entirely! We put the remaining "AIRTRADE" banner around the sides of the Buttermarket on the railings, and posted a reward for anyone who found the 'F'. Several hours later, it was found under a tree in the Castle grounds! Hurrah! It will appear again at the Fairtrade picnic in the summer.
Despite the weather, we got quite a bit of interest, the tea kept flowing despite a couple of technical hitches, and a good time was had by all.

The following night was Bingo night at the local primary school. It had been a non-uniform day for the children, who were encouraged to bring in Fairtrade prizes for the bingo, and to dress in Fairtrade colours for the day. I couldn't be there, but I'm told that some of the older ladies took the whole thing very seriously indeed!

Coming up soon will be a Fairtrade cookery book, produced in collaboration with all the local Fairtrade schools - we hope!

Small Revolutions

Here's a video from Ammanford Fairtrade group, including the 500 mile Fairtrade Bike Ride.

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.