What is Fair Trade?

Fair trade is an organized market-based social movement designed to support and empower product producers in developing countries and promote overall sustainability.

The fair trade movement involves several tiers of conscientious intent:

	in pricing – making sure producers get paid their fair share of the money ordinarily pocketed by the distributors
	in social responsibility – protecting workers' human rights
	in environmental sustainability – ensuring that production and distribution practices are in alignment with protecting our world's sacred and cherished environment, particularly those areas previously exploited in order to manufacture the products in question

Fair trade practices protect previously marginalized workers and promotes their safe and smooth transition to a state of self-sufficiency. In many cases, workers for companies that practice fair trade are even encouraged to become stakeholders in the companies for which they work and giving them much higher equity in the international trade of the products they produce.

A company wishing to claim its practices "fair trade" must qualify for Fair Trade Certification – a tightly-controlled analysis and enforcement of a company's commitment to adhering to fair trade guidelines.
 
All sorts of goods these days are provided fair trade, including:

	coffee
	sugar
	fresh fruits
	cocoa
	crafts
	wine
	cotton and other textiles
	fresh flowers

When fair trade first started, only select, niche companies got involved in implementing its practices. But lately even the most mainstream businesses are raising the fair trade torch. In fact, in recent years, the use of fair trade has skyrocketed, increasing nearly 50% year-to-year in the US and 70% in the UK.

Even eBay is launching its own fair trade site.  Corporate giants like Starbucks are increasingly facing (and folding to) consumer pressure to purchase more of their products from fair trade sources.

Currently, over 7 million workers in nearly 60 developing countries are benefiting from fair trade practices. Not to be mistaken with "free trade," a misnomer for the total absence of regulations and tariffs which hamper international trade rather than empower it, fair trade helps create a global economy where cultures at the bottom of the ladder are given greater opportunities to improve their own quality of life for the valued labours they perform and the contributions they provide the rest of us.

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