English Unlimited HAK/HUM 4/5, Schulbuch mit Audio-CD und CD-ROM (mit Handelskorrespondenz)

120 Trading with the world 10 LANGUAGE SKILLS EXPLORE EXTRAS Read the article again. Make notes of the most important points and write a summary of 8–10 sentences. What have you learned about fair trade? Use the information from the article and your own ideas to complete the description below. a 10 b  The Fairtrade label, which applies to products rather than companies, aims to give disadvantaged small-scale farmers more control over their own lives. It addresses injustices in international trade by ensuring that producers receive better prices and fairer terms. Producers are paid Fairtrade prices aimed at covering the cost of sustainable production plus the so-called Fairtrade Premium, an additional sum for environmental, economic and social development. At present, Fairtrade International works together with 1.4 million farmers in 74 developing countries. The Fairtrade mark is available on thousands of different products, including non-food products such as flowers, gold, footballs and cotton as well as food products like hot beverages, fruit juices, fresh fruit and vegetables, biscuits, cakes and confectionery, sugar, honey, wines, nuts – and cocoa beans.  According to Josef Zotter, cocoa can have a rather bitter aftertaste, if one realises how hard cocoa farmers have to work for very little reward while the big profits go to intermediaries and big multinationals. This is why the manufacturer avoids dealing with middlemen and buys directly from the producers at Fairtrade prices, which sometimes are almost twice as high as the going market rate. A fair-trader by conviction, Zotter believes it is poverty that drives people into criminality and dependency. His simple recipe against drug dealing, child labour and poverty, as well as for a clean environment is to offer people alternatives and enable the farmers to pay a living wage. In Colombia, a country widely associated with drugs and a high crime rate, this formula succeeded in getting 234 families away from growing coca to growing cocoa. Together with ADA, the Austrian Development Agency and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Zotter has been working on a Fairtrade project since 2010. Small farmers living in the northwest of Colombia, one of the poorest areas in the country, agreed to plant Fairtrade organic cocoa and now earn three times of what they did when growing coca for the drug mafia. To get them out of the claws of the drug cartels, on which they depend for their livelihood, it was essential to provide loans to enable them to pay off their debts with the drug barons and produce new crops.  As is to be expected, the project did not always run smoothly. The Zotter employee that was sent to Colombia to work together with the farmers and inform them about organic farming practices and quality standards had to be flown out because the security risk was too high – understandably the drug mafia was not keen on the initiative. A second mishap occurred during transport when the container full of organic cocoa beans was routinely sprayed with pesticides before shipping – as is standard with conventional cocoa – thus making it useless for organic chocolate production.  Despite these hiccups along the route, 10 tons of cocoa from Colombia have already arrived in Styria, with a further 10 tons under production. The story of Cocoa instead of cocaine has become true. It is one of the many reasons why a case study of Chocolate Factory Josef Zotter is rightly part of the undergraduate curriculum at Harvard University. FAIRTRADE Fairtrade is an alternative approach to conventional trade and is based on a partnership between producers and consumers. Its main goals are:  to give (1)  to ensure that producers (3)  to address (2)  to provide an additional Fairtrade Premium, which is (4) The Fairtrade label is given to products that meet certain criteria: farmers have to use (5) and they have to meet certain (6) so, for example, they are not allowed to spray (7) . The Fairtrade mark can be found on many different food and non-food products such as (8) . The advantage for the manufacturer is the close co-operation with the farmers who directly (9) to him without (10) . The advantage for the farmer or producer is (11) . The advantage for the customer who buys Fairtrade products is (12) . Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verla s öbv