Bananas, always the fashion victims of the produce section, are we,’uing another new label this spring. Bananas with "Fair Trade Certified" stickers have been available in the United States since October. They represent the new front of an international effort to help first-world consumers improve the living standards of the third-world farmers who grow much of their food.
By expanding its reach to the produce section, Fair Trade is now trying to reach the American supermarket shopper. Fair Trade deals directly with farmer cooperatives. It helps organize, avoiding brokers (代理人) and middlemen. It guarantees higher prices for the farmers’ goods and helps them set up schools and health clinics.
The Fair Trade movement took root in Europe in the 1990’s as a way of bolstering coffee farmers as prices were collapsing. Since Fair Trade began, more than a million coffee growers and other farmers have joined cooperatives that sell their products through Fair Trade channels instead of directly to a commercial producer.
Not everyone is greeting the Fair Trade label with open anus. Several American coffee importers recently pulled out of Fair Trade, citing TransFair’s "corporate friendly" policies that allow large companies to use the Fair Trade logo in their marketing even if only a small amount of the company’s overall purchases are Fair Trade certified.
Edmund LaMacchia, the national produce coordinator for Whole Foods, said Fair Trade is only one of many consumer choices. "Whole Foods has its own team of inspectors and has no plans to carry Fair Trade’products", Mr. LaMacchia said. "Our standards are higher than Fair Trade’s, actually. " Fair Trade is only one of several labels your bananas might be wearing this year. Another is that of the Rainforest Alliance, which certifies the use of sustainable agriculture methods.
So far, though, Fair Trade is the biggest. A Fair Trade label by itself does not guarantee an organic product, but most Fair Trade bananas are also organic, Ms. Bourque said, because pesticides are usually too costly for the small farmers who grow them. If the bananas are organic, they will be labeled as such, and will probably be wearing a sticker to prove it.
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