Yet more good news for Fairtrade

By way of Politics for People comes news that Cadbury is to switch its entire line of chocolate to Fairtrade. This is obviously not just good news to those of us who believe in co-operative values but also especially to the cocoa farmers of Ghana.

This is excellent news and goes to show the strength of fair trade. The extra income should be a boost for development in Ghana, and fair trade is the best way to ensure that money goes to the people that have worked for it, and who deserve their fair share.

The Fairtrade mark is aimed at securing a better deal for developing market commodity producers, and is used on a range of products such as coffee and bananas. UK Fairtrade sales reached an estimated retail value of 700 million pounds in 2008.

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Ghana, the world's second-biggest producer of cocoa after the Ivory Coast, produces around 5,000 tonnes of Fairtrade cocoa, but the Cadbury deal should triple that to 15,000 tonnes annually. There are an estimated 700,000 cocoa farmers producing Ghana's second most valuable commodity after gold.

I see Ghana also produces gold, which makes it a doubly good week for them.

Good News

I'm sure I'm not the only person who has encountered ethical issues when purchasing ingots of gold. How do you know that your gold is ethically sourced? Well now you can know. There is now Fairtrade Gold [From Politics for People].



On a serious note it does seem like a good thing:

..."Gold miners have jobs that are among the most arduous in the world. They spend long hours underground with little or no safety equipment, working with poisons such as cyanide and hewing the precious metal out of the ground for wealthy Westerners."

The international Fairtrade movement is working with 1,000 small artisanal miners in South America, with the intention of having it available for sale later this year. Supporting the miners won't just improve their income, health and conditions. The partners also intend to reduce the polluting impact of mining.