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| When Harry met Mary in Malawi |
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As a widow with six children and a carer for Aids orphans, Mary Banda is a busy woman. ‘When I lost my husband, I wondered how I would take care of the kids. Since he passed away I have been farming more seriously. I have two acres for groundnuts. With the sales of Fairtrade peanuts I have been able to send two of my children to secondary school.’
The peanuts Mary grows come to the UK via the National Smallholder Farmers Association of Malawi (NASFAM). They are roasted and salted before being packed into distinctive green bags bearing the grinning face of BAFTA-winning TV star Harry Hill. A long term supporter of Fairtrade, Harry has teamed up with 100% Fairtrade nut company Liberation to launch his own brand of Fairtrade peanuts.
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Small scale farmers from Malawi and Nicaragua supply the nuts and receive a fair price for their work, as well as the Fairtrade premium to invest in their communities. Harry visited the Malawian farmers, including Mary, earlier in 2008. Harry said: ‘In Malawi I was particularly struck by how positively the peanut famers viewed the chance to get their peanuts onto the Fairtrade scheme and the real difference it seemed to be making to their lives. Simple things like being able to install a tin roof on their homes rather than a straw one and being able to use a machine to shell the nuts instead of having to do the whole thing by hand.’ The villagers of Mchinji were keen to show him their new guardian shelter, built using the Fairtrade premium. The current hospital facilities can’t accommodate those who have travelled a long way to support and nurse their loved ones, but the new shelter means they no longer have to sleep outside.
For the farmers in Malawi, Fairtrade has meant they can export their peanuts for the first time in many years. Various factors led to the collapse of Malawi’s peanut industry in the 1970s and China, America and Argentina dominated the global market. NASFAM, working with Liberation and Fairtrade pioneer TWIN Trading has begun to get peanuts from Malawi back on UK shelves again. Mary explained to Harry how she now gets a better deal. ‘It helped me greatly when I joined NASFAM. Before this I sold to the local vendors who had tampered scales so they didn’t pay us enough. NASFAM uses good scales, monitored by the Malawi Bureau of Standards.’ Mary is clear about her message for Fairtrade supporters: ‘I want to encourage all the buyers in the UK to continue to buy our Fairtrade peanuts. They are very nutritious and buying them will help us build better futures for our families.’
© Winter 2008 Fair Comment