Fair trade helps farmers overcome poverty

Paying growers just a bit more makes a great difference to their ability to sustain themselves.

The indigenous Aeta tribe survives as subsistence farmers in hinterland villages in the northern Philippines

By Fr Shay Cullen
Manila:  Juan and Maria de la Costa live with their three children in the mountains of Zambales province, about 140 kilometers north of Manila. They are indigenous Aeta subsistence farmers who struggle to make do with what they can grow.

Like millions of impoverished indigenous people, Juan and Maria have been driven out of their ancestral lands and have been toiling on a piece of land they don't own.

They live in a 100-square-meter grass hut. There is no electricity, no sanitation and no running water. Like so many poor people around the world, the couple survives on the edge of life in an age of skyscrapers.

Juan knows nothing of the causes of his poverty. He doesn't know that as few as 140 families rule the country. He also doesn't know that most Filipinos suffer as he does.

Juan and his children dwell in the darkness of unknowing. He and those like him don't know that they have become the source of cheap labor so that the rich can continue to control the wealth of the nation.

In the Philippines, if people of conscience or journalists go about exposing this unfair and unequal situation they are likely to be intimidated, attacked or marked for death.

Many a priest, pastor and lay Christian has been assassinated for speaking out against injustice, human rights violations and the conflict in the southern part of the country.

The great imbalance and divide between the northern part of the country and Mindanao in the south remain wide. The unfair situation results in cheap slave-like labor.

Juan and Maria only know that traders in the town market will buy mangos from poor farmers for only four or five pesos (about US$0.11) per kilogram. And if Juan does not sell at that price the fruit will simply rot in the hot tropical climate.

But the price is not even worth Juan's hard work and long walk into town. He does not have a cart, so he loads a sack of mangos on his back.

Greed, injustice and a total lack of government help are behind the very unequal situation that causes hardship for indigenous peoples and poor subsistence farmers. Their children will remain poor and uneducated.

The Preda Fair Trade Project is a scheme implemented by the Preda Foundation in which the NGO seeks to help small farmers and traditional handicraft makers.

As part of its project Preda, offered to buy Juan's mangos at three times the price that commercial traders pay. Juan and Maria and the other villagers were ecstatic.

Fair trade is bringing economic justice to the poor and the exploited. It is a movement that brings livelihood with dignity to hundreds of thousands of poor people around the world by promoting better trading conditions for them.

This involves the paying of higher prices to exporters by people of conscience in the rich world who want to live out Gospel values and principles of justice, and to put them into practice in meaningful and practical ways. The Philippines needs more of this.

People who buy fair-trade products believe in changing the world by reaching out and helping the people who need it the most.

They support through fair trade people in the developing world who work hard to help themselves and their families. They support and defend human rights activists, priests, pastors and those working for human and economic rights.

They believe Pope Francis who said the Gospel message and Christianity is all about unselfish service and doing justice.

Fair trade is the exit door out of the cycle of poverty. It is one of the best ways to help people overcome injustice, oppression and poverty, and to have a life of dignity.

We all ought to make that extra effort to use our spending power to help others as we go to buy our groceries.

Fair trade products might cost a bit more, but fair-minded customers consider that fair wages and benefits are paid and they don't want to eat food that causes hardship and injustice to others. They want to help change the world and live out their faith, especially in this season of Lent.

Irish Columban Fr Shay Cullen established the Preda Foundation in Olongapo City in 1974 to promote human rights and the rights of children, especially victims of sexual abuse.

Source: UCAN