Surely We Can Do Better Than This By Robin Roth

surely we can do better than this

by robin roth, ceo

the opposite of poverty is not wealth: the opposite of poverty is justice.

I have rarely found a phrase that captures the heart of what we do in fair trade better than this. Injustice tends to flourish where there is distance between us. The further away your coffee is grown, the less you know, or possibly care, about how it was grown and who was exploited in the growing of it. Companies have always understood this: the more distance they can put between you, the consumer, and the grower, the more injustice has an opportunity to take root and the more wealth they can acquire.

we hope it will inspire people to consume in a different way.

Nowhere has this reached its logical conclusion better than in the proliferation of vast, anonymous warehouses filled with “stuff”, origin unknown, and shipped to consumers as cheaply as possible, for the benefit of a few, extremely wealthy individuals. There are, and always have been, of course, many outstanding organisations and visionary individuals who bring growers and consumers closer together; charities reporting from the “front line”; companies who import directly and sell directly to consumers; or local food co-operatives who combine their production and sell to members. They all strive to reduce the distance and ensure more justice in the trading chain. This Black Friday, the day when consumerism tends to go off the scale, we wanted to continue our work as pioneering a different way of doing business. Last year we boycotted the day which was wonderfully provocative, and we enjoyed doing other things that helped the local community and environment. We had a lot of feedback at the time cheering us on and we noticed that we were not the only company trying to turn the day from rampant consumerism to better use. We followed this up with our Transparent Coffee, which again provoked a lot of discussion and thinking. We want to move beyond simple, one-off activities and make this a more permanent feature of how we conduct business - so we are publishing the

cost breakdown of all our Traidcraft-branded products.

Among other things, you can see how much ingredients cost and how much profit we make. You may be surprised at how much other things, like transport packaging and processing, really cost, and you may occasionally be surprised at the real value of what goes back to farmers. If these are fair trade prices, designed to cover the cost of living, profit and investment funds, what are other companies paying you might ask? You might well ask, but I doubt you will ever find out. It is our small contribution to more justice in trade. We hope you will feel closer to the producers who grow the food you eat. We hope it will inspire people to consume in a different way. There is, of course, an alternative to our way of thinking, and it is a rare moment when I leave the final thought to Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon. I could not put it more succinctly than he did when he wrote: “What consumerism really is, at its worst, is getting people to buy things that don't actually improve their lives.”

Surely we can do better than this.