Co-op News September 2019: Agriculture

PRESSURE ON
FAIRTRADE
25
By Rebecca Harvey
YEARS
OF THE MARK
qRahel Mhabuka,
tea worker at Kibena
Tea Estate, Tanzania.
Credit: Simon Rawles
In 1994 Cafédirect, Clipper and Green & Blacks
launched the first products carrying the
Fairtrade Mark in the UK. In the lead-up to the
25th anniversary we spoke with Sarah Wakefield
(food sustainability manager, Co-op Group), Julia
Nicoara (director of public engagement, Fairtrade
Foundation) and Ed Mayo (secretary general,
Co-operatives UK) to look at how the movement
has impacted co-ops – and what the future holds.
Fairtrade has come a long way in 25 years; it works
with over 1.6 million farmers and workers (23% of
whom are women) in more than 1,400 Fairtrade
producer organisations across 73 countries.
Co-operatives UK’s Ed Mayo was instrumental in
the birth of the Fairtrade Mark. “My family was a
regular user of produce from the alternative trade
organisation, Traidcraft, and their recycled toilet
paper ruled at home when I was a child,” he says.
“I was a couple of years out of university,
working for development campaign group WDM,
when I met two people thinking big about global
justice. Martin Newman was at the creative
agency Imagination and Richard Adams was
co-founder of Traidcraft. Richard was concerned
about a crisis in traditional Fairtrade produce
and the need to find new consumers for highquality
products. Martin was seized with the idea
of a mainstream consumer label as a guarantee of
provenance in terms of producer benefits.”
Mr Mayo joined a small team which developed
the concept. The Fairtrade Mark that resulted
drew lessons from Max Havelaar coffee, sold in the
Netherlands and co-developed by the UCIRI co-op
in Mexico, but added explicit criteria that could be
accredited to make Fairtrade possible anywhere.
Mr Mayo worked on the first draft of these criteria
with Belinda Coote (then of Oxfam) and helped to
shape the brand identity, coining the term Fairtrade
as a single word that could be trademarked.
“Almost all Fairtrade is co-operative and the best
of it connects co-operatives through the supply
chain, from producers through to retail co-ops.
Fairtrade is essentially a co-op brand,” he says.
The Co-op Group’s Sarah Wakefield has
been involved in Fairtrade since she set up a
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