Please help !

Is it not a bit distasteful for British farmers to piggyback on the Fair Trade brand name. They are hardly comparable situations.
 
Fair Trade is about producers obtaining a fair price for their goods, whatever they are and wherever they are, I thought? I don't think you have to be a Kenyan coffee producer or a Brazilian cocoa supplier to benefit from its umbrella. I read through the Farmer's Guardian threads on the prices which British supermarkets are trying dictate to farmers, how much they are allowed to produce, how much they'll get, and the costs involved to produce our milk, butter, and cheeses. It makes sense to me that Fair Trade should apply to wherever powerful businesses are trying to shave their payments to an unsustainable minimum, while maximizing their own profits.
 
Well considering what damage the European Common Agricultural Policy has done through the effects of subsidising over-production and 'dumping', to third world countries it does seem a tad inconsistent with fair trade
 
Their own web-site lists the following Internationally-agreed Fairtrade generic criteria exist for the following commodity products and in each category there is a list of approved producers maintained by a FLO register.

Food products:
• Bananas
• Cocoa
• Coffee
• Dried Fruit
• Fresh Fruit & Fresh Vegetables
• Honey
• Juices
• Nuts/Oil Seeds
• Quinoa
• Rice
• Spices
• Sugar
• Tea
• Wine

Non-food products:
• Cotton
• Cut Flowers
• Ornamental Plants
• Sports Balls
 
considering what damage the European Common Agricultural Policy has done through the effects of subsidising over-production and 'dumping', to third world countries
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Accurate, but out of date.

First, farmers now receive a single annual payment, which is not linked to production, rather to compliance with environmental and animal welfare standards. Second, access to EU markets for products from least developed countries is as far as I know almost completely unrestricted thanks to the Everything But Arms initiative. Finally, export refunds are down from over 10bn in 2000 to less than 1bn this year. The stated intention is to be completely rid of them by 2013.
 
So which countries fall into that patronising term "Third World"? Aren't they supposed to be called "developing countries"? South Africa is certainly not a "Third World" country, for example - do any Fair Trade products apply there? Is Fair Trade actually a brand name, with a trademark, and not just an indication of the application of fair trading practice?
 
krizon said:
Is Fair Trade actually a brand name, with a trademark, and not just an indication of the application of fair trading practice?
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I'm pretty certain it is, and I'm equally certain its copyrighted, along with the logo. I think there's a pretty good chance that this initiative is sailing very close to a breach of these terms if they can say it's a derivative and designed to mis-represent the Fairtrade Foundation and therefore to cash in on their name and mislead consumers. I suspect it could well be an 'implied sale' which would breach the Sales of Goods Act (1986?)
 
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Thanks, Warbs. I've just toddled off and Googled it, and it's the Fairtrade (all one word) Foundation, and it explains its remit and ethics in an excellent website. It does, interestingly, expound in some detail about why it doesn't apply its Fairtrade logo to UK milk farmers - the reasons mostly being that our farmers are supported by a number of social benefits which foreign farmers aren't. However, it does say that it supports any effort to try to bend the government towards fairer trading practices in British milk production.

I think there is the strong possibility that 'fair trade' and 'Fairtrade' would be confused quite easily and it might be better if the British producers came up with a new slogan/logo, like "Better Deal" or something like that. However, I've signed the petition because I don't like to see how hard people work, invest their entire lives and money into their dairy herds, comply with DEFRA's 5,829 edicts and try to keep up with its constant changes to those rules and regs, and then get offered the lowest-possible denominator by massively powerful superstore chains. Fair deals, yes - for all.
 
Well, dearest, the opposite of free market capitalism hasn't worked, either! There's obviously a fair, middle way where the producer gets enough to sustain a decent living and invest in growing his business, too, while the supplier needs to stick a reasonable profit on top to allow him to pay staff, maintain premises, blah, blah. But not so that he cripples his producers and essentially imprisons them in a financial bind, where they can't sell because no-one will buy the business, and they can't move it forward because they haven't made enough to do so. Each must assist the other to benefit. The developing world isn't so much not just not a free market or even capitalist, it's usually chaotic and disorganised, with ill-educated farmers being exploited by opportunists.
 
The supermarkets have too much power. Tesco alone takes about 10% of UK consumer expenditure, the big four about 25% between them, I think?

You can be fairly sure that what they are doing to dairy farmers is also being done to the suppliers of hundreds of other products. In Ireland there was a scandal some years ago because supermarkets were charging 'hello money' to producers for the privilege of giving their products shelf space. That practice has been outlawed but the fundamental relationship between small producer and giant buyer remains.

At the last summit here in Brussels thousands of German farmers on tractors turned up to protest about the prices they are getting for milk. Mind you, the fact that the tractors were all sparkling clean and the camp followers were driving Audis, Mercs and BMW jeeps didn't do much to convince the onlooking Brussels public that they were on the road to penury.
 
You try getting your milk off a milkman now days, the old milk dept.s could have been used by the post office to deliver parcels or home deliry's on electic van's we have missed a trick here.
 
Would the protest have been more 'authentic' if the tractors were covered in cow dung, Grey? I thought that the Germans were known for their clean and tidy ways, and I'd rather have expected them to be driving German manufacturers' cars, wouldn't you? They're probably the cheaper option in their country of manufacture, and, besides that, it's patriotic to buy home-made - perhaps something that Brussels wouldn't understand. Certainly not the MEPs on their incredibly gargantuan salaries and, presumably, pretty decent transport for themselves. Or do they all bicycle to work, in a show of solidarity with their edicts about environmental sustainability? I do hope so.
 
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