Fair Trade is a concept describing an ethical relationship between producers and the people who buy their products.  Basically, the fair trade movement is a child of the international development movement.  It started as a way of creating jobs for people in third world countries which paid well.  It still is seen by the owners of the word to relate only to relationships between first world buyers and producers in developing countries, but some of us are working to have producer buyer relationships in industrialized countries recognized and certified as fair trade as well.  Anyway, in a fair trade relationship, the producer is guaranteed an ongoing market for their products.  The buyer is not looking for the lowest price and playing the producers off against each other.  There is a long term relationship with a guaranteed floor price (the lowest price that can be paid by the producer) with the price fluctuating when the world market is strong for that commodity to pay the producer some sort of premium over and above the world market price.  The floor price is set at a place where the producer can make a good living.  To date, most such relationships are between international development groups in the north and workers coops in the south.  The focus has been on high value crops such as coffee and cocoa, though there is some progress here with dried fruit and fresh bananas and mangoes now becoming fair trade commodities we have access to.

We hope someday to be able to provide a grocery store where everything on the shelf is produced and sold via fair trade relationships.  About 20% to 30% of what we sell already qualifies.

Most of this present volume of ethically traded products  is from our local suppliers.  Some of it is through workers coops we deal with in larger centers.  For example, we have ongoing relationships with preferred suppliers for our beef (Pense), chickens (Abernethy, Belle Plaine, Wolsely), eggs  (Abernethy, Melville, Cupar), flour (Qu’Appelle), local produce when available (Qu’Appelle, Craven, McLean), lamb (Dysart), Wild Boar (Prince Albert), fish (Prince Albert), bison (Debden), rolled oats, and many pulses and grains (Kamsack).  In each of these relationships, the producer receives a price that amounts to 70% of their price paid by the consumer.  If you shop at the mainstream supermarket chains, the farmer is lucky to see 10% of your money.  The rest of the money spent at a grocery chain flows out of the country, or certainly, out of the bioregion depending on which particular strain of private capitalism you are supporting.  Our farmers get 70% and they know that I am not open to other producers trying to undercut their price.  We set a floor price, with a premium over market price if the market is stronger than our floor price.  Because they have a reliable market, they can plan with confidence for their future.  The rest of the farmers take what the volatile commodity markets pay them, and when prices are low – the grocery multinationals make lots (prices don’t fall that much) and the farmers go broke if they didn’t put enough away when prices were high.

There is none of that volatility in a fair trade scenario. 

We are working to build a Bioregional Economy, in which anything that can be produced here is, and anything else is purchased through Fair trade agreements.  That would be a world where justice could prevail.