FAIR TRADE QUOTES

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* "Fair Trade is a market-based, entrepreneurial response to business as usual: it helps third-word farmers developing direct market access as well as the organizational and management capacity to add value to their products and take them directly to the global market. Direct trade, a fair price, access to capital and local capacity-building, which are the core strategies of this model, have been successfully building farmers' incomes and self-reliance for more than 50 years."
~ Paul Rice

* No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level --I mean the wages of decent living.
--Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Goods produced under conditions which do not meet a rudimentary standard to decency should be regarded as contraband and not allowed to pollute the channels of international commerce.
--Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"In our country there was no tradition of fermenting cocoa. With Fair trade income we were able to implement a fermentation program to improve the quality of our cocoa and to convert our production to certified organic. This improved our position in the export market. The Fair Trade market is a very important market for the survival of our associates."
-- Isidoro de la Rosa, Executive Director of CONACADO cocoa cooperative, Dominican Republic

"We're not here at Equal Exchange just to be tools of farmers, but to explore what it means to be of service. Business in our society has lost the notion--if it ever had it--that it should do more than create wealth and move goods back and forth, that it should be of service to greater society. ... We learn from the farmers about life's basic priorities, about getting by with less, about living in harmony with the earth. They learn from us about international business, the marketplace, promotion and fina nce. Our customers hold the web together. As more take part, the web grows stronger and we all gain hope from our exchanges. That's alternative trade."
-- Jonathan Rosenthal, executive director, Equal Exchange

We want to begin in working-class neighborhoods. We want to test the concept there, because our idea is that fair trade should not just be for the elites, but for everyone, for the majority, for the poor people. Quality food for poor people. Why just quality for the rich? And at an equal price
-- Victor Sua´rez, Exective Director, the National Association of Peasant Marketing Enterprises

* When you buy Fairtrade products you can guarantee that the farmers who have worked hard to grow them get a minimum price. Fairtrade is a way of giving regular support – and enjoying delicious high quality foods at the same time.
-- Emma Thompson

If Free Trade has been so good to our standard of living, then WHY has our largest employer gone from high union wage paying and benefits GM to low wage paying benefits skirting Wal-Mart???
-- Barbara Toncheff

Fair trade benefit many. From farmers in producer countries to students in a U.S. school studying the environment, the concept and practice of fair trade connects producers and consumers in new and powerful ways. It is the nexus for: meeting both environmental and economic considerations of indigenous peoples; re-balancing the trading relationship between North and South; building a link between U.S. policy and publics to a larger world community that is knocking at the door
-- TransFair USA, 2002

"Thanks to the Fair Trade market, our standard of living has substantially increased. With your support, we look forward to a more promising future."
-- Miguel Trigoso, Marketing Manager, APARM coffee cooperative, Peru

"Thanks to Fair trade, we will not die of hunger. We will not lose our land. Our children can attend school. I want to send thanks to all of the churches that purchase our coffee. Thanks to you, we have a seed of hope in our lives."
-- Jose Luis Castillo Vasquez, member of the Equal Exchange-supported Las Colinas cooperative, El Salvador, and father of six

"With Fair Trade we have an incentive to invest in social programs that benefit producers and the community. We also receive higher incomes to sustain ourselves. If it weren't for Fair Trade, we wouldn't exist as banana producers since the amount we receive for a box of conventional bananas does not cover our expenses."
- Edinson Cabana Zapata, co-op member, ASOPROBAN banana cooperative, Colombia

Fair Trade Quotes

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Fair Trade Day - 2nd Saturday in May

 

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