A gripping account of the campaigns and successes of the Fairtrade movement by the Director of Fairtrade in Britain

It started very small and full of hope, but its daring campaigns have placed Fairtrade goods at the heart of the supermarket shelves. From bananas and coffee beans to cotton and chocolate, Fairtrade has grown to become an important global movement that has revolutionised the way we shop. As Harriet Lamb, Director of the Fairtrade Foundation, explains in this fascinating story, Fairtrade is about a better deal for workers and farmers in the developing world. It's about making sure the food on our plates, and shirts on our backs, don't rob people in other countries of the means to feed or clothe themselves.She explores the journey, through an often unjust system, that Fairtrade items make from farm to consumer. And she uncovers the shocking cost of our demand for cheaper food. There is much still to be done. But by hard work and high ideals, Fairtrade is starting to transform the lives of over 7 million farmers, workers and their families, and is a powerful symbol of how extraordinary change can be achieved against all the odds - by us all.

Harriet Lamb has been Executive Director of the Fairtrade Foundation since 2001, after moving from being the Acting Director at the Fairtrade Labeling Organisations International (FLO) in Bonn - the global umbrella body for Fairtrade. Prior to that she led the campaigning work of the World Development Movement and held a range of other roles, including campaigning for a minimum wage in Britain while at the Low Pay Unit. She has travelled widely in the developing world, including spending 18 months in India working with farmers in rural villages and landless labourer co-operatives. Awarded a CBE in the New Year's Honours List 2006 for her contribution to Fairtrade. She is a highly experienced public speaker and media spokesperson and has written a wide range of publications on development issues.

That June a fax whirred through from the government of St Vincent inviting me to address a major conference on the future of the Windward Islands' banana industry - the very next week! I knew I had to be there. The writing was on the wall for the endangered banana quotas into Europe. A total market free-for-all was looming where only the cheapest banana producers would survive. And while Fairtrade had become more and more important to the Windwards, they still only added up to less than one in five of the islands' output.

I hurriedly rearranged my diary, organising the usual complex schedule of last-minute childcare for my two kids, and jumped on a plane. Supermarket representatives were going too - but they, for all their keenness on cost-cutting for others, were enjoying the pleasures of first class so we didn't meet up until we got to the tiny St Vincent airport. There even the official on passport control knew about Fairtrade and the conference. There was no doubting the importance of bananas in this economy!

I was met by the warm, broad smile of Amos Wiltshire. A cheerful, round man, he is himself a banana smallholder with four acres, as well the National Fairtrade Coordinator for neighbouring Dominica. His head is shaved apart from a long plait at the base of his neck matched by the neat, pointy pigtail into which his beard is shaped.

`Oh welcome, welcome, welcome,' he beamed giving me a bearhug. `I want you to come and see why I really believe Fairtrade bananas are the future of these islands.'

We set off in the car, along the coast, then making our way up steep winding roads through small hamlets and banana farms until we reached Spring Village. We turned off down a small bumpy track and stopped. Among the banana trees which grew all around her house stood a redoubtable lady in a floral print dress and wellington boots, trimming the peeling brown fibres off the stem of a plant. Her lined face and gap-toothed smile lit up under the shade of her white pork-pie hat.

`Welcome to my farm,' boomed Miss Jocelyn Trumpet, as, swinging her machete by her side and swiping at the odd weed, she clumped off up the muddy track to show me the banana trees, the orange trees, the compost heap, the water. `I come here early in the morning. I love to watch the sun rise,' she murmured pointing out her little billy can and Primus stove for a cup of tea.

Filled with passion, she expounded on her love for this hilly little plot where she'd changed many ways of farming to meet the Fairtrade standards. She was pleased to be using fewer chemicals, she said, but it was much harder work. Now she was having to do all the weeding herself instead of spraying them.

She understood very clearly how the recent series of decisions in Brussels, Geneva and London threatened total devastation for her community. She proclaimed in her rich, defiant Caribbean accent, `I love farming. I love Fairtrade. I ain't going down with no banana boat. I staying and I fighting all the way.'

As we left Spring Village to drive back into the capital Kingstown, Amos suggested we take the opportunity to catch up.

`I know just the place,' he said with a mischievous look.
We pulled into a place held in a time warp. One minute we were on the tarmac road passing trucks, the next we were outside a centuries-old tall wooden warehouse, upturned barrels scattered across the dusty ground, a wooden cart on its side.

`This is where they shot Pirates of the Caribbean,' Amos laughed. `After filming finished, they kept the set and opened a bar here.'

As the sun set over the black volcanic sand and we sipped a rum punch, Amos sketched out his plans to bring Fairtrade on further. Surreal as it was, this mock-up of the time when plunder, slavery and sugar marked European contact with this island was strangely appropriate. We sat discussing how the long and bitter legacy of unjust trade could be refashioned into a more equal and balanced relationship. How thousands of small banana farmers on these islands could secure a decent livelihood through a new Fairtrade partnership with consumers in the old colonial power, Britain. Fairtrade had not come a moment too soon, he said. In the 1980s, there were 11,000 banana farmers in Dominica; but that number had fallen to less than 700.

`When prices dropped farmers lost interest and trust in the industry,' Amos said of Dominica. `The economy went down to zero because bananas are the heartbeat of the country. Everything was going haywire: increasing crime, youth violence, delinquency. We even had families torn apart because there was no income, nothing coming in. Husbands couldn't maintain their families. There was an exodus from the country because things were so bad.'
And then, he related, Tesco's Fairtrade orders started coming in. It transformed their situation. Farmers started tending their plots again. As the premiums came in, they bought a `grasscutter' (which I worked out must be what we call a lawnmower), cut a field and created football and cricket pitches. The Fairtrade footie teams were soon attracting young people. As money built up from more sales, they were able to install street lighting in the village most affected by youth violence. The gangs started to melt away as the whole island picked up.

`Fairtrade has been the saviour of the farmers in Dominica - of agriculture and the whole economy,' he said. `With Fairtrade, small farmers have been transformed from marginalised farmers into businessmen.'

2008-04-20 INFORMATIVE, INSPIRING, INDISPENSIBLE

I cannot praise Fighting the Banana Wars and Other Fairtrade Battles too highly. As a Human Rights, Fairtrade and Trade Justice campaigner, it does all the right things for me:

It uses stories of individuals and families to illustrate the big picture of the global trading scene superbly. These stories are well very chosen, and wonderfully told. Harriet's warmth and affection for the people about whom she is writing comes across so powerfully.

It places Fairtrade within the broad context of Trade Justice, which for me is essential. Arguably if the world's trading systems were fair there would be no need for Fairtrade.

It does all this with a powerful conviction and a forceful passion - a passionate anger at the manifold injustices of global trading systems that so savagely damage the lives and livelihoods of tens of millions of farmers and other producers worldwide, and a passionate commitment to do something practical about it.

It is an informative, inspiring and indispensable book.

Buy it now!

Joe Human