Beautiful Earth... Our home, our Mother... We were born here, live, go to school, have friends, strive to achieve in fulfilling careers, start a family, care about children...It is like our dream. Sometimes it is not so pink. When we see something horrifying on television (people dying because of starvation,
children being abused...) we don’t feel good. But if we switch off the TV it disappears. We start again to live our dream. But do we realise that it is not a fairytale? Do we realise that it’s all from exactly the same world we are living in?
Sometimes we forget we are not alone, that it is not all about us. We talk about Africa; families which don’t have food, children who can’t go to school, so instead work hard...Have you ever realised that it is true? In the time, when you are reading this article, many people are starving, ill, maybe they are even dying.
Why? They have no food. Why? They haven’t got any money. Why? They are from poor countries. Why? It was not their choice. Can we do anything about that? Fortunately yes! If you would like to be sure that the banana you are eating wasn’t detached by miserable children, who instead should be sitting at school desks, or that you don’t eat chocolate with childrens’ tears, support Fair Trade. It is good to know that by drinking your favourite coffee, people don’t have to work in hard conditions for a wretched wage which doesn’t even cover the cost of food.

So what exactly is Fairtrade? It is an independent non-profit organisation which is trying to help workers from the developing world. As you will certainly have noticed the world is not always fair. Conventional trade discriminates weaker producers although they work inconceivably hard. Imagine a poor farmer from the Third World. When the crop comes he is forced to sell his products immediately (when price is the lowest) because he doesn’t have any money to wrap it. You think that agriculture is big business. Yes it is, but not for small farmers. They are the last in the market chain. They usually own modest plots of land, completely isolated from markets. The path between them and us is long with many middlemen. The result is that from our money farmers see hardly anything. The aim of Fairtrade is to make shortcut between us and farmers and make their lives better… how they deserve it. Fairtrade focuses on ensuring that farmers receive an agreed and stable price for the crops they grow.

Farmers aren’t the only ones who benefit. Even we as customers do. Everything with a mark of Fairtrade is high quality, whatever it is. There are many products from Fairtrade e.g. bananas (1 in every 4 bananas sold in UK supermarkets is now Fairtrade!), coffees, teas, products from cotton, flowers, biscuits, chocolates...
So while you are sitting in the comfort of a cafe, you are becoming the part of social justice movement which will affect the lives of poor coffee farmers and their families. Isn’t it great? Thanks to Fairtrade, companies have to pay farmers higher than the market price for their products. This means Fairtrade farmers are not at the mercy of the market's whims, and have extra money to invest in education for their children and other social needs. Last but not the least is an impact on environment. Farmers use organic methods, eco-friendly practices, which are suitable for Earth. So it is healthy for consumers, for farmers but even for the world we live in. It is our liberal option if we will close eyes and pretend we can’t see it or face it up how much we are able to. When we change ourselves, we can change the world!
Text by: Adriana Holanova
HTML by: ONy