What is fair trade? Fair Trade Clothing and Fair Trade Jewelry

Use your consumer power to help others
World poverty can seem like an overwhelming problem. What can one person do? By buying Fair Trade Certified products, you can turn an everyday action, like shopping, into something that helps reduce poverty and gives farmers and producers a fair price for their product.

Support education
Many farmers earn so little for their crops that they can't afford to send their children to school, and their children must work to help support the family. Fair Trade Certified goods provide a living wage to farmers and artisans, helping kids stay in school and get an education.

Empower women
Fair Trade encourages women's leadership in cooperatives and supports programs that benefit women. For example, in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, the CEPCO coffee cooperative has set up an innovative program to help women coffee farmers, providing training in coffee cultivation and processing, as well as other important livelihood activities. These programs have helped make significant improvements in the lives of the participating women.

Keep families together
With today's low coffee prices, small farmers and coffee pickers who are not connected with Fair Trade are fleeing rural areas in search of work. Women and children are left behind to tend the fields and pick the coffee, and kids are taken out of school. Farmers who grow fair trade products, in contrast, earn a living wage that helps pay for their expenses, invest in the future, and keep families together. Children of coffee farming families in Loma Linda, Guatemala now attend school, thanks to the extra revenue provided by the sale of Fair Trade coffee.

Support community development
Fair Trade producers and workers belong to cooperatives and community development organizations that invest in better housing, health programs, schools, and scholarships. For example, the Costa Rican coffee cooperative COOCAFE uses fair trade revenues to fund improvements in 70 local schools and has provided 6,700 scholarships to students so they can attend high school and university.

Protect the environment
Fair Trade supports small farmers who use land more efficiently and in a more environmentally friendly way. Traditional small coffee and cocoa farms contain many species of crop, shade and fruit trees. Fruit trees provide habitat for songbirds and help prevent topsoil erosion and mudslides. Fair Trade helps farmers make the transition to organic farming and the use of more sustainable techniques.

Promote democracy
Fair Trade producers and workers belong to democratically-run cooperatives or community organizations. To function successfully, these cooperatives must be open and transparent in their operations. This helps foster grassroots democracy in many countries where many citizens have little experience participating in the democratic process.

Provide a long-term solution
One of the tenets of Fair Trade is that buyers and producers build long term partnerships. Unlike aid, which is dependent on donors, Fair Trade offers a sustainable way for farmers, artisans, and their families to improve their livelihoods.

Prevent illegal drug crops
Low coffee prices mean than many coffee farmers cannot make a living by growing coffee alone. This has pushed many coffee farmers to start growing crops destined for the illegal drug trade. Coca, the plant from which cocaine is derived, and chat, an amphetamine-like stimulant, are more dangerous to grow, but more lucrative for small farmers. When they earn a fair price for their coffee, fewer farmers need to switch to growing coca or chat.

Promote economic stability
In most developing countries, the majority of the workforce is engaged in agricultural activities. Buying Fair Trade Certified coffee helps to support small-scale agriculture. This can increase a country's food security, making it less dependent on foreign imports. The extra income from Fair Trade products can also help stimulate rural economies.

This article was excerpted from and Oxfam America document.

The principles of fair trade are ethical practices meant to assist and support the third world farmer and artisan.

Fair prices: Democratically organized farmer groups receive a guaranteed minimum floor price and an additional premium for certified organic products. Farmer organizations are also eligible for pre-harvest credit.

Fair labor conditions: Workers on Fair Trade farms enjoy freedom of association, safe working conditions, and living wages. Forced child labor is strictly prohibited.

Direct trade: Importers purchase from Fair Trade producer groups as directly as possible, eliminating unnecessary middlemen and empowering farmers to strengthen their organizations and become competitive players in the global economy.

Democratic and transparent organizations: Fair Trade farmers and farm workers decide democratically how to use their Fair Trade revenues.

Community development: Fair Trade farmers and farm workers invest Fair Trade premiums in social and business development projects like scholarship programs, quality improvement trainings, and organic certification.

Environmental sustainability: The Fair Trade certification system strictly prohibits the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), promotes integrated farm management systems that improve soil fertility, and limits the use of harmful agrochemicals in favor of environmentally sustainable farming methods that protect farmers' health and preserve valuable ecosystems for future generations.

Many people ask if they can find organic fair trade clothing.

Fair Trade standards require sustainable farming techniques and offer price premiums for organic production, but Fair Trade certification does not guarantee that a product was organically grown.

However, Fair Trade farmers are more likely to use sustainable, traditional growing methods rather than apply (expensive) agrochemicals, and producer groups frequently use Fair Trade revenues to train members in environmentally sustainable farming practices and to finance the cost of organic certification.

Fair Trade and organic certification often go hand in hand. Currently over 60%of Fair Trade Certified coffee in the U.S. is also certified organic.