A British supermarket aisle and the Maraba coffee growing region in southern Rwanda might as well be on different planets. But thanks to Maraba's dealings with Union Coffee Roasters, the UK gourmet coffee firm, what seems like an unbridgeable wealth chasm could, in this case, be narrowing.
A bank giving loans to small businesses opened in Maraba six months ago. Children of growers who belong to the Abahuzamugambi co-operative all attend school. A whole region has been transformed.
The power of fair trade is that growers, previously squeezed by middle men, giant retailers and at the mercy of violent currency fluctuations, receive above-market rates for products, which are put back into businesses and communities.
In its 10-year UK history, fair trade has been ridiculed for being the preserve of bleeding-heart liberals and having little impact on poverty in the developing world. What's more, critics say, supermarkets offer products purely as lip service to global trading iniquities but carry on ruthlessly demanding low prices from suppliers in the rest of their dealings. But could this sector be going mainstream? Tomorrow Britain's biggest supermarket, Tesco, will launch its own-label fair trade brand, taking its range to 60 products.
In one of the biggest breakthroughs for this sector of food retailing, Tesco's initiative - timed to coincide with the start of Fairtrade Fortnight - will see producers from developing countries receive above-market prices for items from orange juice, wine, tea, and coffee to biscuits, chocolate and grapes. Shoppers will even be able to buy fair-trade roses from Kenya. The supermarket expects to shift 12 million stems annually. Its sales of fair-trade goods doubled in the past year.
Last year, says the Fairtrade Foundation, total sales of its distinctive blue-and-green kite-marked products grew by 50 per cent to £90 million. This follows five consecutive years of 40 per cent year-on-year growth.
In coming months, fair-trade footballs will be launched to coincide with the forthcoming European football championships, as well as fair-trade cotton and clothing.
The sector's growth has been achieved, without advertising, by word of mouth. Now, though, supermarkets are trying to outdo each other by launching products.
Tesco's move comes just months after the Co-operative Group shifted all its chocolate to fair trade. 'It's been a complete turnaround,' said Ian Bretman, commercial director of the Fairtrade Founda tion. 'I used to beg to get meetings. Now they're all knocking on my door. Attention on this goes right up to chief executive level.'
Bretman said studies show 25 per cent of consumers are now aware of fair-trade products and that growth could get to £600m in five years at current growth rates.
But the current £90m fair-trade sales figure is still puny compared with UK food sales of £100 billion.
'There are a group of customers who want these things and the feeling they're helping developing countries' farmers. Obviously it has started small, but so did organic,' a senior Tesco executive said.
'Growth of 40 per cent is a significant step forward,' said Richard Hyman of retail consultancy Verdict. 'But it's a drop in the ocean. We're living in a period in which price is increasingly important and people need a good reason to pay a premium for anything.'
That may be, but supermarkets make more money from quality products than low-cost fare. What's more, the driving force behind fair trade is growing awareness that hundreds of millions of people are condemned to poverty by powerful, unjust economic forces.
Tariffs imposed on developing countries' cotton and sugar exports by America and Europe, together with huge subsidies to rich countries' producers that reduce world commodity prices, are the main barriers for poverty-stricken nations. But there are also arcane rules preventing developing countries processing commodities which would allow them to sell products for higher mark-ups.
In this respect fair trade's existence acts as a public awareness exercise for those seeking reform of the global trading system. Focus on fair trade comes as a new United Nations report reveals that Africa is dangerously over-reliant on a few commodities: tea, coffee, cocoa and cotton. Despite some improvement in the early 1990s, between 1997 and 2001 the UN's Committee on Trade and Development's combined price index of all commodities fell by more than 50 per cent, while tropical beverages and vegetable seeds and oil, which comprise one-fifth of sub-Saharan Africa's non-fuel commodity exports, registered the highest decline of all in real terms.
But reform of the world trading system has stalled following the collapse of talks last September in Cancun, Mexico.
'There's a need for preferential treatment for products from poor countries. What's happening at the moment is the precise reverse,' says Bretman.
Michael Bailey, a trade and development expert at Oxfam, says: 'We pay a lot more for our food because of trade barriers. Europeans are paying an extra €1,000 a year thanks to the Common Agricultural policy and an extra €270 on clothing. If you had a fairer trading regime, consumers and taxpayers would save money.'
Who says fair trade has to be expensive?
