Bring fairness to the fruit

Harriet Lamb’s new book, “Fighting the Banana Wars and Other Fairtrade Battles: How We Took on the Corporate Giants to Change the World”, is out in the U.K. I’m awaiting a review copy, but an excerpt was printed on the NewConsumer magazine website. Fairtrade is a system that seeks to ensure that the folks who produce the foods we eat are well compensated for it; work in safe environments; and have an element of ownership over those products. Bananas were one of the first items Fairtrade advocates worked on in the early part of this decade, which makes sense, because bananas are highly visible at market, and banana workers have been particularly ill treated since the industry was founded in the 19th century.

U.S. consumers don’t see much Fairtrade product – you’ll find beans produced under that banner at Starbucks, but very little else,especially at your average chain grocery – and globally, bananas with the certification don’t make much of a statistical dent in overall sales: less than one-tenth of one percent of the 13 million metric tons of the fruit produced every year for export are certified by Fairtrade Labeling Organization (it is also important to point out that Fairtrade bananas are not necessarily organic, and that farming conventional bananas – no matter who receives the profits – requires applications of often-toxic chemicals.)

But, as the book notes, Fairtrade’s impact has also been symbolic, and the idea is spreading. One advocate put it this way:

“Don’t look only at sales volumes and market shares, look at the issues on the agenda, look at what the public are asking and what companies are debating. When we go into negotiating rooms with companies now, even if they’re not yet doing Fairtrade, they all have to do something on social and environmental issues.”

What place does Fairtrade have in the global effort to save the banana? If one of the answers involves making more kinds of banana available to consumers – building a market in so-called “varietal” fruit, which would likely command a premium price – that could dovetail nicely with the economic development ideals of Fairtrade.

Learn more about Fairtrade.

Tags: Banana Economics, Banana News