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As you will know by now (see the vicar’s letter if not), this year has been designated as the one in which (it is hoped) poverty in our world will be eradicated.
The aim is to MAKE POVERTYHISTORY.
A year or so ago, I saw a programme on TV about cocoa growers in Africa (The Gambia I think) where they ‘employed’ young boys on their plantations. None of these lads were actually paid, they were fed on very basic rations and housed in sheds. And what is worse in many ways, they had been sold to the plantation owners by their families for a paltry sum because their parents couldn’t afford to keep them. The growers, in their turn, are forced into this kind of behaviour by the buyers, who only pay them a pittance for the cocoa beans, so that they can make a reasonable profit when the sell the raw cocoa to the producers - companies like Cadbury, Rowntree, Nestlé etc. And it is they who make the biggest profit by selling the finished chocolate, in all its mainifestations, to us - the consumer. So, the conclusion has to be that when we buy Kit Kats or Yorkies or Dairy Milk etc. we are actually adding to the misery of people in the poorer parts of our world.
I was so appalled by this that I resoloved never to eat chocolate again - unless it is fairly traded. And I’ve kept to it!
Sadly, chocolate is just one product where situations like this exist, and unfair trading practices are just one of the contributory factors in making two thirds of the world suffer from extreme deprivation and poverty. In some parts of Africa, it is cheaper for local people to buy ‘Uncle Sam rice’ than their own local product. The rice imported from America is heavily subsidised while anything they wish to export to the US has to be at a rock-bottom price otherwise it is embargoed by the US government. How unfair is that? The growers of ‘fine green beans’ in Kenya, which all our supermarkets now sell, can no longer afford to eat their own beans - they must sell all they produce just to make a living. And so it goes on. However you look at it it’s unfair trade and it has got to stop.
Companies such as the Day Chocolate Company who make DIVINE chocolate, buy their cocoa beans from co-operatives where the workers have equal shares in all profits. And companies like Gateshead’s TRAIDCRAFT support and encourage such projects in the production and manufacture of a whole variety of goods, from food to clothing, wine and fruit juices to crafts and gifts. They also pay fair prices for all the good they buy. So, we may pay a little more but, surely it has to be worth it.
As you will have seen in the last edition of Newslink, Durham Diocese recently became a designated Fairtrade Diocese where 60% (and more) of our parishes and organisations have pledged to offer FairTrade tea and coffee and to campaign for fairtrade issues. Now St Luke’s PCC have voted to join in. We too have become a Fairtrade Parish.
Another of the practical ways in which we can all help to move that forward is to make sure that, whenever possible, we buy fairly traded products, many of which are now available in our supermarkets. Personally, I cannot see any excuse for not doing so! The CO-OP in particular is dedicated to marketing FAIRTRADE goods - especially those things such as chocolate that it produces. And, of course, the more we buy, the more our supermarkets will supply!
Paul Judson
