The Great FairTrade Grocery Hunt - post here

lynzpower

Hi

well Ive searched around and Ive not been able to find one of these threads, so I thought Id steal Martins thunder and start a fair-trade hunt for groceries.

Edited to add in:

For those who dont know what fairtrade is Heres an excerpt from the Fairtrade website.

The FAIRTRADE Mark is an independent consumer label which appears on products as an independent guarantee that disadvantaged producers in the developing world are getting a better deal.

For a product to display the FAIRTRADE Mark it must meet international Fairtrade standards. These standards are set by the international certification body Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International (FLO).

Producer organisations that supply Fairtrade products are inspected and certified by FLO. They receive a minimum price that covers the cost of sustainable production and an extra premium that is invested in social or economic development projects."

Additionally, there are a number of other products having worked with the fairtrade foundation that will come CLOSE to being marked, however for a number of reasons are not. Fairtrade status can and is awarded to UK producers as well as producers in other countries.

The fairtrade foundations website is here http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/

If the product is endorsed by the fairtrade foundation, it should carry this logo


IN the realm of groceries, I suggest its things that you either eat, drink, or clean your house with.

So.....

If there are any "bargains" OR particularly recommended products that you find, do let us all know

Ill start

Traidcraft chocolate wafers - a fairtrade version of the nestle blue riband, covered in belgian chocolate- 10 for 99p ( flashed pack) in morissons- very highly recommended they are lovely, and very good value for the price.

Anyone know where theres a good price for fairtrade "from concentrate" juices? We go through loads here and could do with having it delivered to save my hands on the bus

Anyway, your go [/QUOTE]

Debt_Free_Chick

This is probably not what you want, but for me, "fairtrade" is to buy direct from small local producers. Helps the local economy, fewer food miles, fresher food.

If we don't support our local British suppliers, all our food will end up being imported :eek:

Baileys_Babe

Lynzpower have you looked for a local whole food coop, the one I use has a huge range. I use it for most of my ambiant goods. They have a good range of fair trade, organic.

Rikki

My Tescos sell fair trade coffee. Cafedirect 5065.

headintheclouds

Debt_Free_Chick wrote:

This is probably not what you want, but for me, "fairtrade" is to buy direct from small local producers. Helps the local economy, fewer food miles, fresher food.

If we don't support our local British suppliers, all our food will end up being imported :eek:

I agree that that is important and cutting down on food miles etc. is the way to go. However, there are some things that you can't produce locally - e.g. tea, coffee, bananas, chocolate, and that's where the more traditional "Fair Trade" concept comes into play. I have found the Co-op to be the best of our local supermarkets for stocking a wide range of fair trade goods, including fruit juices, own brand chocolate, tea and coffee, and yummy chocolate cakes. Independent organic shops can be good too, but I also think it's important to show the big chains that there is demand for this type of produce and to encourage them to keep stocking it.

A recent article in the Independent on Sunday listed M&S and Waitrose as the top chains for stocking fair trade products. However, they do tend to be expensive places to shop and Waitrose does bump up the prices - e.g. 1L Fruit Passion orange juice 99p in Sainsbury's but £1.25 in Waitrose.

Lynzpower - agree with you about the Fairbreak chocolate wafers - yummy.
If you register with Traidcraft as a fair trader you can buy at 10-15% discount on all items from food and drinks to clothes.

Must be time for a cup of fairly traded tea now.

GardenMillie

Got a brilliant bargain on fair trade bananas from Tesco on Monday - they were reduced to 9p for nearly a kilo. Had one for my tea break today - yummy and will make some banana bread this weekend with some of the others, bargain.

:j

Debt_Free_Chick

headintheclouds wrote:

I agree that that is important and cutting down on food miles etc. is the way to go. However, there are some things that you can't produce locally - e.g. tea, coffee, bananas, chocolate, and that's where the more traditional "Fair Trade" concept comes into play.

Agree entirely. But there are too many people (generally, not here) patting themselves on the back for being "green" and buying fairtrade coffee, but sticking them in the same basket as their Kenyan beans, Dutch tomatoes, Argentinian beef and New Zealand apples!

Unfortunately, I don't share your confidence in changing the big supermarkets. They only stock organic because they can make big money on it and the market is still too small, so it's spread around all the supermarkets, rather than just one. What really annoys me is the amount of imported organic food they sell :mad: That's gotta be an oxymoron!

Supermarkets will just come up with some other marketing ploy to switch shoppers' attention to some other money-spinning product, in the same way as they did with books, CDs, white goods and gardening products.

Blimmin' supermarkets :mad:

lynzpower

I had a sense this was going to turn into the whys and wherefores of whether fairtrade is a good or bad thing.

Until in the UK we can grow, tea, coffee, sugar, tropical fruits ( which |I dont eat, even bananas due to food miles, but others do) rice, cocoa, chocolate and a host of other stuff, I will buy from abroad. I like to know that my money is going to something productive if/when I buy these products.

Now can we keep this thread on track please.

Cheers

Debt_Free_Chick

lynzpower wrote:

I had a sense this was going to turn into the whys and wherefores of whether fairtrade is a good or bad thing.

Until in the UK we can grow, tea, coffee, sugar, tropical fruits ( which |I dont eat, even bananas due to food miles, but others do) rice, cocoa, chocolate and a host of other stuff, I will buy from abroad. I like to know that my money is going to something productive if/when I buy these products.

Now can we keep this thread on track please.

Cheers

That's a bit harsh, don't you think? Have you read your OP which simply asked for our recommendations on a "fair-trade hunt for groceries"? If you want replies on specific products then help us out please by (a) defining "fair-trade" and (b) defining "groceries" as they appear in your OP.

Imported versions of products we can and do grow locally are definitely NOT "fair-trade" and NOT green.

OK - I specifically did not exclude what we can't grow locally from my OP, but if we don't produce it we can't buy it.

All threads tend to widen the topic, as people add their own comments on something which they think is relevant ... or which is closely aligned to the intended topic. Is that a bad thing?

Regards

Voyager2002

Debt_Free_Chick wrote:

Imported versions of products we can and do grow locally are definitely NOT "fair-trade" and NOT green.

I'm unhappy about this statement.

A whole range of products that we can and sometimes do grow locally are also imported: take green beans and a whole range of vegetables, for example. Now, IMHO there is a big difference between the way they are grown in Kenya, on plantations that are controlled by big business and that take away water from nearby small farmers, and what happens in Ghana, where vegetable production is a lot of hard work but is just about the only way that a young man can make enough money to get married and establish himself in farming. Or bananas: compare the pattern of production on small family farms that you find in the Windward Islands with the large, foreign-owned plantations that are effectively run with slave labour that you find in Colombia (for instance).

The question about fair trade is extremely relevant here. Even in the case of green vegetables, you can argue that it is fairer to give the business to a young farmer in Ghana than to a giant agri-business in Norfolk.

Even on the 'green' question the issue is not clear-cut. Granted that exotic imports involve food-miles, but methods of intensive farming practiced in the UK (including the intensive ways used to produce "supermarket-organic" products) are arguably more damaging than the best practice found in parts of the 'Third World'. For example, the banana farmers of the Windward Islands use organic methods, but cannot afford the high fees that the Soil Association charge for certification and so cannot sell their bananas as organic. And much of Colombia's coffee is grown on small farms, again using near-organic practices.

lynzpower

Debt_Free_Chick wrote:

That's a bit harsh, don't you think? Have you read your OP which simply asked for our recommendations on a "fair-trade hunt for groceries"? If you want replies on specific products then help us out please by (a) defining "fair-trade" and (b) defining "groceries" as they appear in your OP.

Imported versions of products we can and do grow locally are definitely NOT "fair-trade" and NOT green.

OK - I specifically did not exclude what we can't grow locally from my OP, but if we don't produce it we can't buy it.

All threads tend to widen the topic, as people add their own comments on something which they think is relevant ... or which is closely aligned to the intended topic. Is that a bad thing?

Regards

Ive altered my Original post to give links for those among us who are not clear on fairtrade.

My apologies