Fair trade (cacao)

Fair trade is an organisation that wants to make our world a better place and help those who have it rough. One way that they help people are that they help them sell their products and gives them a bigger profit from their products. as it is today the ones who does all the dirty work gets the minor wage from their work. Like those who are on the cacao field picking all the cacao beans earn about 40-100 dollars a month while those who are sitting on their butts and doing some paperwork earn a lot more. Child work is also a common thing on the cacao fields. Hundreds of thousand of kids work on the fields every day to get enough money to live a life.

The cacao farmers in south Belize have had it really rough due to the Hurricane Iris in 2001 that destroyed most of their harvest and their homes. And the lack of education has made it hard for the and they have made some bad judgements and lost much money.

The money from Fairtrade goes to the whole society where they harvest the cacao. The people who harvest the cacao have had meetings to decide what they should use the money to. The money often goes to the construction of schools, hospitals and to the old people who can't work any more. If the oldest people didn't get the money they would starve, or be a burden to the rest of the family/tribe.

The price crash

In 1991 the price of cacao fell to less than half its former value and the farmers started to get it rough because of the money problems. When the price of cacao fell, they thought that it wasn't worth all the time needed to pick, process and deliver the cacao. Many of the farmers just left their farms to seek a new job where they had better wages, they felt like it wasn't worth all the effort to work with cacao any more. The price crash destroyed almost all of the farmers' hope for a better life.

What do you think? Is it worth changing the life of hundreds and thousands of poor people just by buying some cacao? We do, think of it.

Have a nice day! // john and jonathan <(^_^<) (>^_^)> ^(^_^)^