Today is the start of Fairtrade fortnight, the annual celebration of the campaign to secure better prices, decent working conditions, local sustainability, and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world.

With Scotland aiming for Fairtrade nation status, and Britain’s biggest sugar producer switching all its retail sales to Fairtrade, Fairtrade no longer conjours up an image of old ladies selling dodgy groceries from rickety stalls at the back of churches.

However, congratulations to all these pioneers – without your commitment none of this would have happened, and your work is far from over. European supermarkets are still flooded with goods from developing countries at ridiculously low prices. The ability of the world trade to exploit the weak truly knows no limits.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 6:38 pm and is filed under Fairtrade. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.