Fairtrade Fortnight

It's Fairtrade Fortnight at the moment, until Saturday 10th March. You'll probably find lots of Fairtrade produce on special offer in the supermarkets until then.

Buying Fairtrade sugar, tea, coffee, chocolate, bananas and other fruit, flowers, cotton, or anything else is a way of helping the people who produce our food and other things we buy to be paid enough to live on. In some countries ordinary working people aren't paid enough to feed themselves and their families properly never mind provide a decent home, clothes, healthcare or education and the state doesn't provide them. Small producers around the world are at the mercy of market forces that are stacked against them

Fairtrade was set up to provide a more level playing field for small producers and to help them get a better deal. Paying producers a fair price means they can stand on their own feet in normal circumstances. Buying Fairtrade products is not charity. Fairtrade is necessary because normal global trade cheats small producers.

If you care about what's fair look out for the Fairtrade logo:

I'll be looking at Fairtrade again in the future, but if you want to know more now take a look at the Fairtrade Foundation website. 

Food for Thought

A box of organic, locally grown veg can help to reduce your carbon footprint

We all need to eat to stay alive. Food is nourishing, pleasurable and something we enjoy sharing with family or friends.  However, the choices we make about food can make a difference to the world around us.

Green Christian suggests we follow the LOAF principle when deciding what to eat, if we want to make ethical and sustainable choices about our food. LOAF stands for

Locally produced

Organically grown

Animal friendly

Fairly traded

Buying as much locally produced food as possible will reduce the amount of CO2 emissions produced by the food we eat, because the fossil fuels used to transport our food are creating serious problems for the Earth's climate, which is vital to the well being of us all.

Few of us are able to grow all our own food. Most of us drive to the supermarket for most of the food we eat. That food was transported from where it was grown to the supermarket. Often it has travelled in the opposite direction to be washed or processed in some way, sometimes it travels from one side of the world to the other side before it reaches us.  Transporting our food creates a lot of CO2 emissions, so buying as much unprocessed food that has been grown as locally as possible will reduce our CO2 emissions and probably be healthier for us, too. Transporting fertilisers and animal feed adds to the carbon emissions resulting from the way our food is produced.

There is strong Scientific evidence that a marked increase CO2 emissions and other Greenhouse Gasses is seriously contributing to the increase in Climate Change in recent decades. This briefing from Friends of the Earth goes into more detail about the impact our food production has on Climate Change.  I shall take a closer look at Climate Change next week.

Here is an article from Green Eatz which gives the carbon footprint (the amount of carbon produced in a lifetime) of some common foods.

If you have a farm shop near you which sells food grown on the farm or from other local growers buying as much locally produced food as you can from them will help to reduce your carbon footprint, i.e. the amount of CO2 emitted to fulfil your wants and needs. Buying food grown or raised as close to you as possible will also mean it should be fresher and more nutritious.

If you don't have a nearby farm shop selling local produce a veg box scheme, such Riverford Organic Farmers, is a good way to buy organic, seasonal, locally produced fruit, veg and even meat that haven't been air-freighted from around the world.

In later posts I shall consider the benefits of organically grown food, the importance of animal friendly choices and why fair trade is important, amongst other things.