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#5: Your town. If you feel like Fair Trade Certified products should become more prevalent in your community, you can work towards getting your town certified as Fair Trade. The five criteria are fairly general, and the governing body, Fair Trade Towns USA, encourages interested citizens to implement them however they see fit, based on what you need to cope with at the local level. In order to get certified, you must organize a steering committee, work with local retailers to beef up their Fair Trade product offerings, educate your neighbors, alert the media, and, finally, get your town council to adopt a government resolution requiring the purchase of Fair Trade products whenever such an alternative exists and is viable. Media, Pennsylvania, a small town just outside of Philadelphia, became America's first Fair Trade town in July 2006. Since then 12 other cities have declared themselves Fair Trade, and 19 cities, including Washington DC, are in the process of doing so. |
fair trade certified
5 Ways to Save Small Farmers with Your Dollar
October is Fair Trade Month, so raise a glass of Fair Trade Certified wine, and try some other fair-trade products you may not have been aware of.
By Emily Main
Topics: organic farming, fair trade
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Fair trade for American Farmers
I just read this article about fair trade for farmers in other countries. What about fair trade for US farmers. Small farms are disappearing. In the 4.5 miles between my house and the nearest town there used to be over eight working farms. Now there are 3..one of them raises replacement cows, and one has sheep, the last one is still dairy. Chances are it will not be for long. The farmer is getting close to retirement and neither his son or daughter seems to be likely to take over. One reason for this is the market is not fair to farmers. Milk prices are capped - I have heard the cap has not been raised in years. Farmers are trying to pay all their expenses with the same amount of income they were getting around 10 years ago. Imagine any other machinery/labor intensive business not being able to raise their sales price in that long. It is not helping that more food is being imported (this makes no sense - we are already crippled because we are dependant on other countries for fuel - imagine what it will be like when we are dependant on them for FOOD). Small farmers here are at a disadvantage because farm factories have the whole "economy of volume" going for them. I have also heard about the new identifying system that the govt is trying to implement. Small farmers will have to buy the equipment and tag each animal. Factory farms will be able to "tag" whole herds. So while you are telling folks to vote with their dollars tell them to vote for the small American farmer. Buy local.