Harriet Lamb Fighting the Banana Wars and other Fairtrade Battles
Only 14 years ago you couldn’t buy a Fairtrade product in Britain. Today over £300m worth of goods bearing the FAIRTRADE Mark are sold annually, including tea, coffee, bananas, cotton, flowers and even footballs. At the heart of this revolution in our shops is the Fairtrade Foundation. Starting small but with big ideas, it has turned a grass-roots movement into a phenomenon of our time – changing not only the way in which corporations deal with their suppliers and how consumers shop on the high street, but also transforming the lives of over 7 million farmers, workers and their families.
In Fighting the Banana Wars and Other Fairtrade Battles, Executive Director of the Fairtrade Foundation in the UK Harriet Lamb relives the dramatic campaigns and successes that have brought Fairtrade to this point, outlines the hurdles still to be overcome and shows what we can all do to help achieve global Fairtrade
The Fairtrade Foundation is all about creating a better deal for workers and famers in the developing world. At its heart it aims to make sure the food on our plates, and shirts on our backs, don't rob people in other countries of the means to feed or clothe themselves. In Fighting the Banana Wars and Other Fairtrade Battles, Harriet Lamb travels through an often unjust system to uncover the shocking cost of our demand for cheaper produce. From South America to India and Africa, she meets producers and farmers to explore the devastating effects of first-world capitalism and so-called free trade on individuals in the developing world, and investigates how Fairtrade can quite literally transform their lives.
Meet Jorge Ramirez, manager of El Guabo, a banana co-operative in southern Ecuador, which has helped a small community of farmers to survive in the face of exploitation by multinationals; Amos Wiltshire, National Fairtrade Co-ordinator for Dominica, where the introduction of new Fairtrade orders from Tesco enabled a community blighted by crime, violence and gangs to regain order and self-respect; Bruce Crowther a local vet and campaigner who turned Garstang, Lancashire into the first Fairtrade Town in the UK; Ganga, a worker in an organic cotton farmer’s group in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, who thanks to Fairtrade has finally managed to buy a set of weighing scales to ensure the community is no longer cheated by money-lenders.
Across the world the Fairtrade Foundation has begun to make a huge change to millions of lives. However, there is much to be done to challenge the deep injustices still disfiguring our world. The Fairtrade campaign has always operated successfully as a mosaic, with millions of individuals taking steps to affect change on a worldwide scale. As Tadesse Meskela, General Manager of the Oromia Coffee Farmers’ Co-operative Union in Ethiopa and star of the documentary film on coffee Black Gold puts it, ‘Fairtrade is not just about buying and selling. It is about creating a global family’. And so Fighting the Banana Wars and Other Fairtrade Battles also outlines how we can all help chip away at decades of ingrained injustice and the fight the battles still to be won.
Combining an inspiring examination of the Fairtrade organisation with some of the rich stories of those who have worked to create, and been effected by, Fairtrade around the globe, Fighting the Banana Wars reveals how we can all take matters into our own hands, and really make a difference.
The Fairtrade Foundation was established in 1992 by CAFOD, Christian Aid, New Consumer, Oxfam, Traidcraft Exchange and the World Development Movement. These founding organisations were later joined by Britain's largest women's organisation, the Women's Institute.
The Foundation is the UK member of Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International (FLO), which unites 21 national initiatives across Europe, Japan, North America, Mexico and Australia/New Zealand. The Foundation licenses the FAIRTRADE Mark to products which meet internationally recognised standards.
The Foundation works to raise awareness of the FAIRTRADE Mark and to increase sales of Fairtrade certified products. Each year in March Fairtrade Fortnight is held, when local groups of supporters and campaigners across the country link up with supermarkets, wholefood shops, churches and other faith groups, and schools to promote Fairtrade.
Harriet Lamb has been Executive Director of the Fairtrade Foundation since 2001. She has guided the Foundation through a period of staggering growth, which has seen estimated sales of Fairtrade products in the UK increase from £30m to more than £290m in 2006, with more than 3500+ retail and catering products carrying the FAIRTRADE Mark.
A flourishing grassroots social movement across the UK. There are more than 300 Fairtrade Towns – towns where a commitment to Fairtrade has been made by the council, shops and businesses – together with 50 Fairtrade universities and 4,000 Fairtrade Faith Groups just been launched and there is interest from Mosques and Hindu Temples.
Harriet lived in India for six years including time working with farmers in rural villages and landless labourer cooperatives and has travelled extensively in Africa and Central America.
She now lives in south London with her partner and two children and can often be seen cycling around London. Harriet was awarded a CBE in the New Year’s Honours List 2006.
Notes
Harriet Lamb is available for interview. For more information, please contact Caroline Newbury at Rider Books on 020 7840 8730 or cnewbury@eburypublishing.co.uk