What is fair trade?

This should probably be the first of all our texts, but there is so much to share that we often end up getting lost. Therefore, today the motto is what is fair trade?

Fair Trade is an international movement, created in the 1960s in the Netherlands (with predecessor experiences in the United States in the second half of the 1940s), its mission is to promote an alliance between all the players in the trade balance, from producers to consumers, seek to denounce the injustices of trade and build increasingly fair and coherent commercial principles and practices.

This movement, based on the position of representatives of the countries of the Southern Hemisphere, at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, defended, without success, a new “solution” to support development: “trade, not aid” (“trade, not aid”). trade, not aid”). This concept has evolved and adapted to the context of the world we live in, and despite all the paradoxes that coexist, some of the basic principles have remained since the beginning, such as:

• respect and concern for people and the environment, putting people above profit;
• the establishment of good working conditions and the payment of a fair price to producers (covering the requirements of environmental protection and economic security, in addition to decent income);
• the protection and promotion of human rights, in particular those of women, children and indigenous peoples, as well as equal opportunities between the sexes;
• the provision of pre-financing or access to other forms of credit;
• the establishment of stable and long-term business relationships;
• production as complete as possible of products marketed in the country of origin;
• strengthening the organisational, productive and commercial capacities of producers and producers through training and technical and commercial advice;
• the transparency of the organization's structure and of all aspects of its activity, and mutual information between all those involved in the commercial chain about their products or services and marketing methods.

We cannot forget how social and commercial relationships are too complex to be reduced to a set of rules. It makes no sense to simply impose them, in essence it is a progressive relationship in permanent collaboration between all the actors in the chain, and not just by a few, and they are continually challenged by new realities.