Fair_Trade

Fair Trade The system of fair trade was created in Europe and in North America by organization of international development wishing to support the craftsmen and the producers of the countries of the South. It is in 1946, in North America, that Mennonite International Development Agency (now known under the name of Central committee Mennonite) established the first project of direct purchase with poor craftsmen of Latin America. In Europe, in 1950, Oxfam began to organize the sale of small business crafts made by Chinese refugees in stores in Great Britain, and not enough time later, a group of Dutch activists and activists began to import directly Haitian wooden sculptures to help the craftsmen and the craftswomen to become economically autonomous. By eliminating the intermediaries, the fair trade aims at leaving a bigger part of the profits to the producers. The certification of the fair trade was born at the end of the 80’s. It is about a system of monitoring set up to make sure that both the producers and the importers respect a precise series of social and environmental criteria. A distinctive logo allows the consumers to recognize fair products. The coffee was the first fair certified product put in market. In certain European countries, big companies of coffee quickly offered some fair coffee in supermarkets and coffees. Somewhere else, the distribution developed itself more slowly. The coffee is currently the fair certified product the most sold on the market. In 2002, 63 groups of producers and producers in 22 countries of all the producing regions cultivate some fair coffee. These groups are in Bolivia, in Brazil, in Cameroon, in Colombia, in Costa Rica, in democratic Republic of Congo, in Dominican Republic, in Equator, in El Salvador, in Ethiopia, in Guatemala, in Haiti, in Honduras, in Indonesia, in Mexico, in Nicaragua, in Papua New Guinea, in Peru, in Tanzania, in Thailand, in Uganda and in Venezuela. After the oil, the coffee is one of the most important goods on the world market which makes, about, 25 million farmers live. Nine developing countries depend on it for more than 20 % of their exports and four other countries for more half of their sales abroad. The first program of fair certification was born in 1988 in the Netherlands. The Max Havelaar foundation was so appointed in honour of the hero of a Dutch novel of the 19th century which denounced bad treatment undergone by the workers of the coffee during Dutch colonial period.