About Fair Trade

Fair Trade is a certification that pushes to ensure workers are being fairly rewarded for their work. Many workers in developing countries (coffee farmers for example) usually do not have any power over the price at which they are able to sell their crops. Fair Trade addresses this problem by returning power to the farmers who grow the crops. This is done in a variety of ways…

• Farmers are given a minimum price for their crops, this price is set at a living wage to ensure that they are able to live off of the crop price

• Farmers become apart of cooperatives, these cooperatives are able to share information, have better selling power and receive Fair Trade premiums that they use to invest in their local communities

• Fair Trade has standards that also address banning child labour, banning forced labour, and environmental protection

• Fair Trade covers a variety of products, from coffee, bananas, to textiles, allowing consumers to buy products that they know are not exploiting farmers