by Edmund K

Created on: May 12, 2008   Last Updated: June 13, 2009

Mother's day has just recently passed on the eleventh of May, and many families celebrated this day with flowers, chocolates and good cheer to the one person that loves us most. However, many of us think little of how the flowers or chocolates that we buy so casually from the market or chocolatier are produced. How did the florist get hold of those flowers? Where did they come from? How much was paid to the grower? How much was paid to the harvester of the cacao beans, and the countless workers who changed these cacao beans into chocolate?

Fair Trade is a partnership comprised of several large international import organizations based in Europe, the United States of America and Canada whose primary aim is to strive for greater equity in international trade. More specifically, it seeks to allow traditionally marginalized, predominantly agrarian or craft producers to achieve competitive prices for their goods and services in the international market.

The effect of this is an improvement in the living standards for socially and economically underprivileged producers, as well as new trading opportunities for countries whose principal production is based on agrarian, handicraft, and simple textile manufacture.

The genesis of the Fair Trade philosophy was initiated by non-governmental aid organizations (NGOs) and religious groups in the mid 1940s. Their development in the beginning was strictly handicraft-based, in which hand-made baskets and stitch work was sold at small fairs and religious-oriented gatherings. As the movement grew in strength, various other NGOs joined the viewpoint of promoting international trade rather than international aid, thus increasing the power of the Fair Trade brand and allowing it to expand further into developing countries. In the 1980s, the label expanded from solely handicrafts to farming goods, thus promoting the fair sale of agrarian products. [1]

Economic development is achieved through the following standards implemented in the Fair Trade process [2].

The Fair Trade standards for the alleviation of poverty and the creation of sustainable development aim to maintain the price level for goods and services in economically underprivileged areas of the world at the free market price, or close to it. Ensuring that the price is set by the free market system rather than by an unscrupulous middle man allows producers to get a fair price for their product. This leads to an improvement in living standards for producers and more opportunities

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