Last month, when four Sainsbury executives met with Africa's largest tea-growing cooperative

farmer at a hotel in Nairobi, it was the gold standard for ethical trade and the world's most trusted
and renowned food certification, Fair. It must have been a joint celebration of trade. system. But
instead of stroking the back of the Pride Hotel, the world's largest retailer of Fair Trade products
intends to hold a world-famous fair to 13 major tea companies and their 228,000 co-operative
members. By telling, they have created the greatest crisis in the program's 25-year history of trading
programs for their products and replace them with the word "fair trade". Instead of strict rules devised
by a group of farmers to work with independent development experts to ensure that consumers are
given the right wages and bonuses, $ 23 billion retailers set the standard, Perform another way to pay
the group. Starting next week, the company will label its brands of gold, red and other best-selling teas
as "Fair Trade" instead of "Fair Trade." This is officially a pilot, but it is suspected that Sainsbury's
will extend the new standard to other products such as bananas and coffee. In addition to the Fair Trade
brand issue, it was announced last week that Tesco will move all of its branded coffee from Fair Trade
to another ethical certification scheme, the Rainforest Alliance. According to trade magazine Grocer, this
is expected to happen in 2018, after retailers announced earlier this year that they would do the same
with their own brand of tea. At the meeting with Sainsbury, farmers, mainly from Malawi, Rwanda and
Kenya, were stunned. "Why change the system that has worked well for both poor farmers and large
supermarkets for 25 years?" Asked one person. Didn't the supermarket be a pioneer of fair trade and
earn tens of millions of pounds of profit and great moral admiration by asking shoppers to pay a little
more for produce? And in return for meeting Fair Trade's high social, labor and environmental standards,
smallholders benefit from the sense of fair play of British consumers in the millions of dollars. "Isn't
everyone winning?" Asked the tea farmer. However, the Nairobi conference was important because
Sainsbury's is just one of many major food and beverage companies that are rethinking their supply
chains, reducing costs, and developing their own environmental and labor policies. .. Since Sainsbury's
is so important to Fair Trade, the company's move is the beginning of the end of the program, which
can lead to lower social and labor standards, more difficulty in developing countries and deeper
consumer turmoil. Yes, some developers and ethical trade groups say. "This move by Sainsbury
represents an important step towards becoming a strong retailer," said Managing Director of Divine
Chocolate, a highly successful ethical trading company owned by tens of thousands of cocoa farmers in
Ghana. Sainsbury's says. 90% of the children of the Sukambizi Association Trust in Malawi go to
primary school. Photo: Chris Terry / Fair Trade Fair trade began as an idea in the 1980s, and there is
growing recognition in Europe that smallholders in developing countries are being robbed by a terribly
unfair global commodity trading system that perpetuates poverty and punishes the poorest. .. In 1992, a
group of major British international charities, including Oxfam and the World Development Movement,
took a small Dutch initiative to establish the Fairtrade Foundation. Twenty-five years later, the
certification system, which guarantees farmers the lowest prices and monetary bonuses, has grown from
a commercial margin to a mainstream retail business. Fair Trade is currently a $ 2 billion annual
global company supported by governments, charities, churches, women's associations, Aristo celebrities
and supermarkets. In Britain, where it is most popular, nearly 80% of people are said to recognise its
distinctive logo. It has been an unlikely commercial success story, and a ray of optimism for millions of
people concerned about inequalities between rich and poor countries and deteriorating human and labour
rights. “Fairtrade is growing worldwide, especially in southeast Asia and eastern Europe. It now benefits
1.6 million farmers worldwide, has 1,240 Fairtradecertified producer organisations in 75 countries and last
year a record £150m was sent as social premium payments to producer groups,” says Darío Soto Abril, the
Colombian chief executive of the International Fairtrade organisation. “The need to change a global food
system that exploits both people and planet is greater now than ever,” says Abril. "There are new
challenges. Climate change makes life difficult for smallholders, children are exploited, and many
workers in developing countries are paid well below the poverty line. Fairtrade , Changing to meet these
new challenges. " Meanwhile, ethical trade in non-food products, from clothing to crafts, is growing
steadily in the West and is now said to be worth an additional £ 1 billion annually. After activists
boycotted companies and under public pressure, various certification schemes emerged that allowed
retailers to participate at a fixed price. For some time, companies were willing to pay and audit their
supply chains independently, but in recent years some of the larger companies have decided to audit
independently. High street chains such as Costa, Starbucks and McDonald's, as well as manufacturers
such as Unilever, M & S and Mondelez / Cadbury all develop their own programs. However, their
standards are very different and consumers need to trust the company. Contradictory meetings in
Nairobi highlighted the despair of small-scale farmers in a global trading system where supermarkets
and shippers import raw produce from developing countries to make significant profits, but to farmers.
Almost nothing goes. He also showed how valuable a good ethical trading system is for smallholders.
Meeting attendees said they became more concerned as Sainsbury's boss promised access to contracts,
advice, and data and told them that the new internal system would fit their current income. .. Women
in particular have been empowered by Fairtrade at the tea