When you buy Fairtrade products such tea and coffee you are gauranteed that the workers who were involved with the growing of that crop were payed a fair proper wage.  The Fairtrade Mark is also a gaurantee of quality healhty working environments and farming techniques that are sympathetic to the surrounding natural environment.

Fairtrade Facts

The prices paid by coffee companies in richer countires like Europe and NorthAmerica to these farmers have not risen, in real terms, over the last forty years.  Is this fair? 

The low price of coffee in the 1990's had a huge effect on many of the farmers, forcing them into dept and often causing them to lose their land.  Is this fair? 

Many farmers when faced with such low prices tried to produce even more crops in the hope of maintaining their income.  This kind of farming can involve the use of large amounts of fertilisers and pesticides, which can cause a lot of damage to the soil, environment and the people working with the crops.  Is this fair?

Tea is usually grown on plantations.  Farming tea requires a large number of people to work on plantations to pick the tea leaves.  It takes one tea picker sixteen pluckings to pick enough tea for a single cup.  As tea prices have hardly changed over forty years planatation owners pay very low waages to their pickers to ensure they make some profit on their tea leaves.  Is this fair? 

Fairtrade works by

• Buying directly from the farmer or farmer organisations.  This makes sure profits go to the workers.
• Farmers receive a gauranteed price, which will not drop even if the world price does.
• Because the farmers receive a gauranteed price they do not have to try and grow more than their quota, which allows them to use less fertilsers and pesticides and grow in a more environmentally friendly way.
  
• Setting up longterm contracts with farmers which allow them to invest money in trainning and taking care of their workers and staff.

Ballymun - The Fairtrade town?!? 

The purpose of a Fairtrade Town is to contribute to Fairtrade Mark Ireland’s (www.fairtrade.ie) aim in tackling poverty by enabling disadvantaged producers from poor countries to receive a better deal, through encouraging support for the FAIRTRADE Mark

GAP Ballymun, and the more recently formed Ballymun FairTrade Town Steering Committee, has promoted FairTrade since 2001.   Ballymun has been very fortunate to receive funding from Trocaire to help raise the profile of Trade justice issues in Ballymun.  The FairTrade towns project has also recently been included in a Ballymun Regeneration Limited (BRL) / EU project called IMAGE – Transforming Neighbourhoods, Improving Cities (www.image-project.org), which is a project focusing on the rebranding of city areas across Europe.

FairTrade projects and events have been ongoing over the last 2 years. Following Ballymun’s last FairTrade Towns status report submission in July 2005, we were informed that all Ballymun needed to do, in addition to what has currently been achieved, is encourage a flagship business to adopt a FairTrade policy.
(Note: Criteria and goals from FairTrade Mark Ireland are attached at the end of this document)

For Ballymun to become Dublin’s first FairTrade town, the Ballymun Steering Committee requires assistance from BRL and DCC in promoting a flagship business in the area to adopt a FairTrade policy.  The Ballymun Steering committee will also need assistance to provide suitable signage on main roads entering Ballymun, if we gain FairTrade Town status.

For more information about FairTrade contact FairTrade Mark Ireland  

If you intersted in finding out more about Ballymuns FairTrade town campaign, contact us at the GAP office: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it