International trade makes billions – but many producers living in poverty barely get a sniff of it. Real lives can be forgotten in the race for profits, with basic rights exploited rather than protected.
A significant number of people work very long hours in unacceptable conditions – without enough of a wage to feed their family, send their children to school or have access to safe water and sanitation.
World trade laws are steeped in injustice, excluding poor producers from the income their labour generates. Tariffs imposed by rich countries make it simple for poor countries to export raw materials at rock bottom prices, but nigh on impossible to export finished goods for a profit. As prices for cash crops such as tea, coffee and chocolate fluctuate wildly and often fall, those who harvest them do not have financial security and spiral deeper into poverty.
The European Union (EUC) Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) exacerbates the problem by encouraging European farmers to produce a surplus, then dumping it on the world market at cheap prices. Poor producers can’t compete with these prices and provide basic necessities for their families. CAP has erected barriers against developing world products entering the EUC, shutting down the alternatives for producers and keeping them in poverty. For example, the EU subsidises dairy farming so much, that each EU dairy cow (there are 21 million of them) earns US $2.50 per day – enough to buy it an around-the-world air ticket each year and have £400 spending money… (Source: CAFOD)
Tearfund believes trade can provide a way out of poverty, through Tearcraft (Tearfund’s income-generating projects at a local level); through campaigns, for example with the Trade Justice Movement; and with its very own Lift the Label campaign, which gives you the chance to join in. And we can all buy fair trade products which guarantee fair prices for third world producers.