Fair and local - a Cumbrian farmer in the Windward Islands

by Faith Mall, Fairtrade Foundation, and Robert Craig, Cumbrian farmer

Should you buy local or should you buy Fairtrade? Perhaps the choice does not have to be mutually exclusive. Today a groundbreaking conference will consider the situation of small farmers in developing countries and farmers in Cumbria.

More than 150 delegates involved in farming, food and wool processing, in food distribution, sustainability, local and national government are attending the conference held by the Cumbria Fair Trade Network entitled Cumbria Local and Fair: Fair Dealing for a Sustainable Future: the Case for Fairtrade and Local.

The conference will consider the similarities and differences between the situation of small farmers in developing countries and farmers in Cumbria. The Fairtrade Foundation has recently released Fair and local - Farmers of the world unite, a discussion paper comparing the experience of marginalised farmers across the world. The executive summary of this paper can be found here.

Cumbrian farmer Robert Craig, who is also a regional spokesperson for the National Farmers Union, visited Fairtrade banana farmers in the Windward Islands recently.

Of his visit, Robert said:

Why take a Cumbria farmer to the Windward Islands? The answer is simple. Firstly both milk and bananas are food staples, part of almost everyone’s diet. Nearly all of us who shop in a supermarket will come out with both milk and bananas in our trolley and that’s not all. Both are used by the grocery trade as loss leaders.

This strategy of using staple foods as loss leaders has stripped so much value out of these foods over the past 40 year consumers see them of such little value that 30% don’t even get consumed and end up being binned. 

The best part for me on any trip like this is meeting other farmers. Experiencing the passion they have for their work, something all farmers who work hard long hours to produce food will identify with.

One young farmer we visited was Moses. His farm was high up in the mountains not far from the main airport and holiday resorts in the south of St Lucia near View Fort. Quite probably the most difficult farm we visited. Perched on the top of a mountain with steep sloping sides was a small banana plantation of about 7 acres.

All the fruit was carried by hand up the steep hills to the packing shed near the top, a torturous job in the heat and humidity. In amongst the banana plants Moses was growing pineapples and water melons and when combined with the odd coconut palm this farm could only be described as a mountain top paradise. His pineapples were sold on to a local hotel and his bananas were packed on farm for Waitrose back in the UK.

The most amazing thing about this farm wasn’t the beauty of its setting or the superior quality and variety of the fruit but the fact that this small 7 acre farm had built from scratch and was paying the running costs of a small pre-school in the local village, educating 20+, 4/5 year old children.

The trip really opened my eyes to the damage that the continual pursuit of ever cheaper food has done to small primary producers. Now as never before the world needs to support all of its farmers, big or small, to rise to the challenge of more mouths to feed.

This week the 7 billionth person has been born somewhere in the world, yet today following decades of price wars our supermarkets are still intent on stripping out more and more value from our food.

So as a consequence we in the so-called developed world can throw away a third of the food we buy, in fact enough food each day that would feed all the hungry in the world.

Today’s conference in Cumbria represents at local level, part of a bigger UK and global movement, that is now recognising the food crisis and the need to put the value back into farming and our producing supply chains.