About Fair Trade tea, coffee and more
You’ll see the fair trade brand on tea, coffee, bananas, and many other foods and beverages that you may have in your fridge and pantry stocked with them. Products bearing this mark generally signify that they were manufactured and distributed under conditions of fairness in all aspects of business. For example, the farms where they were grown employ fair labor practices. Another example is that the manufacturers of these products are concerned that their employees always have favorable working conditions.
Tea that has been certified as a fair trade product is made by companies of different sizes, from small to large. Certification bodies face the challenge of helping the entire industry, as they cannot focus solely on independent farmers and ignore large tea estates employing hundreds of workers. To fix this, tea estates now have joint organizations where working conditions, benefits and other plans for workers and farmers are discussed.
An interesting story is that of 100 percent organic fair trade tea in the Uva district of Sri Lanka. Its Koslanda black tea helps around 600 families by giving them work on the plantation, making available micro-credit programs and buying other resources that can provide additional income.
If you are a chocolate lover, you will definitely love chocolate bars and sweets that exceed the standards of any of the certifying bodies even more. In addition to enjoying the rich, smooth flavor of the candy, you’ll feel good that these products support the movement to keep living wages, ban child labor, and help many farmers around the world have a better life. Many companies can afford to sell cheap cocoa products, because they use minors to work on their farms and pay substandard wages. With these chocolate products, you are assured that the producers of the product do not carry out these illegal schemes.
There are also chocolates that are not only fair trade certified, but also organic. Many cocoa farms that are now getting their fair trade certifications are also striving to reduce the pesticides and dangerous chemicals they use in cocoa farming.
There is a growing awareness of the importance of providing benefits to farmers and all other workers involved in the manufacture of various food products. Apart from tea and chocolate, there are also other foods around the world that are manufactured under fair trade rules and regulations. Now you will also find fair trade spices, oils and rice. And the list keeps growing.
