Joy Daniels now works at a Fair Trade travel company in Cape Town. Credit: Ida Karlsson/IPS

By Ida Karlsson
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Jan 23 2019 (IPS)

Long before Joy Daniels became the manager of a travel company she was cleaning rooms at a guesthouse. But after joining a Fair Trade-certified business, a place that valued its staff, in a few years she was soon promoted to manager. 

A Fair Trade certification is one of several initiatives in South Africa aimed at developing tourism in a responsible way.

“The way they were running that guesthouse and the way they were dealing with staff was totally different from what I experienced later on. I tried to help out here and there but I was kept back. I was just a cleaner and that was it,” she says of her previous company.

But after joining a Fair Trade-certified business she got the opportunity to develop new skills. There was a position available as manager and people encouraged her to apply.

“I have not studied management. Everything I learnt was day-to-day stealing with the eye. And I had never worked on my own without supervisor. I was very scared, but I realised I had nothing to lose.”

She was offered the job and she says the experience made her grow both personally and professionally.

“I used to be very shy. It built up my self-esteem. And when you run a company you think differently in other parts of life as well. There is a lot of things that I learnt, how to manage my life and my time, to make sure that my personal life is also in order,” Daniels says.

The impact on her life was enormous. The single mum was soon able to move from Mitchell’s Plain—a former apartheid suburb for people of colour that is still troubled by gang violence—to Sea Point, a trendy residential area on the edge of the Atlantic ocean in Cape Town.

Beneath the slopes of Table Mountain in Cape Town, another Fair Trade Tourism accredited business, a backpacking hostel started in 1990, welcomes travellers from all over the world.

Lee Harris at the hostel in Cape Town. She hopes that in the future responsible tourism is nothing unusual. Credit: Ida Karlsson/IPS

“Me and my best friend Toni wanted to make a difference right from the start and our very first brochures were printed on recycled paper. Unheard of in those days, in fact it was a little difficult to get the paper,” Lee Harris, co-owner, told IPS.

Harris and Toni Shina have invested heavily in the well-being and professional development of the staff members. There is a staff bursary fund, which supports the education of employees and their children with up to 15,000 Rands (around 1,000 dollars) per year. The bursary means a chance for families to put their children in good schools.

The owners pay the school fees directly to the school so they get it timeously. While schooling is free in all South African government schools, some former “whites-only” government schools (which are now open to all races by law) are administered by school boards that charge minimal fees for the maintenance of the schools and provisions of extra murals etc.

One of the security guards used the bursary to pay for studies to become a pastor. Another employee used it for studies in tourism. They also have a provident fund, which is a retirement fund that the staff pay towards.

“It is like an enforced saving which is theirs when they either leave or retire,” Harris says.

They also make sure the staff members can see a doctor four times a year and that people are treated well if they become seriously ill. One of the staff members suffered from tuberculosis.

“We never get rid of people if they are sick, we try to work around it instead,” Harris explains.

The hostel has also implemented a number of eco-friendly practices; recycling, worm farms, water-wise shower, tap heads and solar panels.

“We have a company that comes every Monday to recycle our waste. The table scraps are put in a bin and used by a city farm nearby,”  Harris says.

They only buy vegetables and fruits in season. Leftovers are packed and handed out to people in the street. The hostel is also actively involved in a range of social initiatives.

At the hostel they let the staff decide on the rules of the workplace, which are integrated into the employment contract.

The staff members travel long distances to work as they cannot afford to live in the city.

“It costs about 1,000 Rands (around 70 dollars) a month to get to work and the government basic salary is 3,200 Rands (around 200 dollars) so what can you do with that? Our entry level salary is 2.6 times the basic wage – 8,500 Rand (around 590 dollars), ” Harris says.

Fair Trade in Tourism South Africa, FTTSA, started initially as a project of IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature. But later a separate local non-profit organisation was formed. FTTSA has six guiding principles – fair share, fair say, respect, reliability, transparency and sustainability.

“There are 230 certification criteria. Businesses struggle with the administration involved to pass the audit. We do a lot of consulting to get them through the process,” Jane Edge, Managing Director, FTTSA, tells IPS.

The Fair Trade Tourism standard is directly applicable in four other countries – Malawi, Zambia, Uganda and Zimbabwe – and through mutual recognition agreements in additional five countries.

Edge says there are plans for expansion.

“In a year or so we want to be active in 12-13 African countries,” she tells IPS.

Meanwhile, Harris says: “I hope that in the future responsible tourism is nothing unusual.”

Scene from Ndanifor Permaculture Eco-village in Bafut in Cameroon’s Northwest Region, the country’s first and only eco-village which is based on the principle that the answer to food insecurity lies in sustainable and organic methods of farming. Credit: Mbom Sixtus/IPS

By Mbom Sixtus
YAOUNDE, Aug 2 2015 (IPS)

Marking a shift away from the growing trend of abandoning sustainable life styles and drifting from traditional customs and routines, Joshua Konkankoh is a Cameroonian farmer with a vision – that the answer to food insecurity lies in sustainable and organic methods of farming.

Konkankoh, who left a job with the government to pursue that vision, founded Better World Cameroon, which works to develop local sustainable agricultural strategies that utilise indigenous knowledge systems for mitigating food crises and extreme poverty, and is now running Cameroon’s first and only eco-village – the Ndanifor Permaculture Eco-village in Bafut in Cameroon’s Northwest Region.

“Biodiversity was protected by traditional beliefs. Felling of some trees and killing of certain animal species in certain forests were prohibited. They were protected by gods and ancestors. We want to protect such heritage” – Joshua Konkankoh
Talking with IPS, Konkankoh explained how the eco-village organically fertilises soil through the planting and pruning of nitrogen-fixing trees planted on farms where mixed cropping is practised. When the trees mature, the middles are cut out and the leaves used as compost. The trees are then left to regenerate and the same procedure is repeated the following season.

“Here we train youths and farmers on permanent agriculture or permaculture,” he said. “I call it ‘permaculture the African way’ because the concept was coined by scientists and we are adapting it to our old ways of farming and protecting the environment.”

While government is keeping its distance from the project, Konkankoh said that local councils and traditional rulers are encouraging people to embrace the initiative, which is said to be ecologically, socially, economically and spiritually friendly.

“I was active during the U.N. Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. In studying the reason why many countries failed to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), we realised that there were some gaps but we also found out that permaculture was a solution to sustainability, especially in Africa. So I felt we could contextualize the concept – think globally and act locally.”

The permaculture used at the eco-village makes maximum use of limited agricultural land, and villagers are taught how to plant more than one crop on the same piece of land, use a common organic fertiliser and obtain high yields.

Farmers, said Konkankoh, are encouraged to trade and not seek aid, to benefit from their investment and prevent middlemen and multinationals from scooping up a large share of their earnings. The organic agriculture practised and taught in the eco-village is a blend of culture and fair trade initiatives.

Joshua Konkankoh, founder of Cameroon’s first and only eco-village, shows off some nitrogen-fixing trees. Credit: Mbom Sixtus/IPS

“We encourage rural farmers to guarantee food sovereignty by producing what they also consume directly and not cash crops like cocoa and coffee.”

Farmers are trained in the importance of manure, of producing it and selling it to other farmers, as well in innovative techniques of erosion control, water management, windbreaks, inter-cropping and food foresting.

Konkankoh also told IPS that it was a mistake to have left the spiritual principle out of the MDG programme. “Biodiversity was protected by traditional beliefs.  Felling of some trees and killing of certain animal species in certain forests were prohibited. They were protected by gods and ancestors. We want to protect such heritage.”

The eco-village has started a project to replant spiritual forests with 4,000 medicinal and fruit trees in a bid to reduce CO2 emissions.

Fon Abumbi II, traditional ruler of Bafut, the village which hosts the Ndanifor Permaculture Eco-village, believes that the type of cultivation of fruits, vegetables and medicinal plants used by the eco-village will improve the health of local people.

He is also convinced that with many firms around the world producing health care products with natural herbs, the demand for the products of the eco-village is high, guaranteeing a promising future for the villagers who cultivate them.

Houses in the eco-village are constructed with local materials such as earth bags and mud bricks, and grass for the roofs. Domestic appliances such as ovens and stoves are earthen and homemade.

Sonita Mbah Neh, project administrator at eco-village’s demonstration centre, said that the earthen stoves bit not only reduce the impact of climate change by minimising the use of wood for combustion but the local women who make then also earn a living by selling them.

Lanci Abel, mayor of the Bafut municipality, told IPS that his council is mobilising citizens to embrace permaculture. “You know, when an idea is new, people only embrace it when it is recommended by authorities. We are carrying out communication and sensitisation of the population to return to traditional methods of farming as taught at the eco-village.”

Abel also had something to say about the performance of genetically modified plantain seedlings planted by the Ministry of Agriculture at the start of the 2015 farming season in Cameroon’s Southwest Region, which recorded a miserable 30 percent yield.

The issue had been raised by Mbanya Bolevie, a member of parliament from the region who asked Minister of Agriculture Essimi Menye about the failure of the modern seeds during the June session of parliament.

Julbert Konango, Littoral Regional Delegate for the Chamber of Agriculture, said the failure was due the fact that seeds are often old because “there is inadequate finance for agricultural research organisations in Cameroon as well as a shortage of engineers in the sector,” a sign that the country not fully prepared for second-generation agriculture.

Commenting on the incident, Abel said that citizens using natural seeds and compost would not have faced these problems, adding that “besides the possibility of failure of chemical fertilisers, they also pollute the soil.”

The eco-village, which would like to become a model for Cameroon and West Africa, is a member of the Global Ecovillage Network.

Edited by Phil Harris   

Coconut oil producers in Samoa are benefitting from a scheme to connect local organic farmers with the international market. Credit: Matias Dutto/CC-BY-ND-2.0

By Catherine Wilson
SALELOLOGA, Samoa , Sep 17 2014 (IPS)

Rural farming families in Samoa, a small island developing state in the central South Pacific Ocean, are reaping the rewards of supplying produce to the international organic market with the help of a local women’s business organisation.

“In Samoa, we are a very blessed nation, most people have their own piece of land and we have the sea,” Kalais-Jade Stanley, programme manager for Women in Business Development Inc (WIBDI), a Samoan non-government organisation dedicated to developing village economies, told IPS.

With the resources to grow food and the social safety net provided by traditional kinship obligations, people rarely go hungry. According to the World Bank, Samoa has one of the lowest food hardship rates in the region at 1.1 percent, compared to 4.5 percent in Fiji and 26.5 percent in Papua New Guinea.

Women in Business Development Inc (WIBDI) is working with 1,200 farming families and 600 certified organic farmers across the country, generating local incomes totalling more than 253,800 dollars per year.
But Stanley says many rural families experience a lack of economic opportunity, such as “not being able to access markets” and being “unaware of what they could potentially access” to make their livelihoods more resilient.

In Gataivai, a village of 1,400 people on Savaii, the largest island in Samoa, Faaolasa Toilolo Sione has worked the land for 40 years. Here approximately one quarter of the country’s population of 190,372 support themselves mainly by subsistence and smallholder agriculture.

In the island’s rich volcanic soil Sione grows taro, yams, bananas, cocoa and coconuts. He sells these crops at a market in the nearby town of Salelologa and from a stall located on the roadside in front of his home.

But his livelihood significantly prospered after he began working with WIBDI in 2012 to produce certified organic virgin coconut oil for international buyers.

Now Sione employs four to five workers in the organic oil-processing site on his farm, which is adding value to his coconut harvest. He produces 80 buckets, each 19 litres, of coconut oil per month, which brings in a monthly income of about 12,000 tala (5,076 dollars).

“Organic farming is not easy, but there are a lot of benefits,” Sione said. “I have more knowledge about good farming practices and a regular weekly income, which helps send the children to school and support my extended family.”

He has also purchased water tanks for the family and a new truck to transport produce. Transportation can be a major challenge for farmers. Those who don’t own vehicles frequently rely on public bus services to take their wares to buyers across the island or in the capital.

An estimated 68 percent of Samoan households are engaged in agriculture and WIBDI, which understands rural vulnerability to environmental extremes and economic barriers in the Pacific Islands, wants to see many more achieve Sione’s success.

Samoa’s economy is limited by the geographical challenges of being a small island state situated far from main markets. Located in a tropical climate zone and near the Pacific Ring of Fire, the country is also highly exposed to natural disasters.

Multiple shocks in the past 20 years, including numerous severe cyclones since the 1990s, an earthquake and tsunami in 2009, the 2008 global financial crisis and the destructive taro leaf blight pest took their toll on the agricultural sector. As a result, its contribution to the economy almost halved from 19 percent to 10 percent in the decade ending in 2009.

According to a government report prepared for the Third International Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS), “Raising the quality of life for all in all sectors of the economy remains the most significant challenge” for the small Polynesian state of Samoa.

WIBDI, which aims to be part of the solution, is working with 1,200 farming families and 600 certified organic farmers across the country, generating local incomes totalling more than 600,000 tala (253,800 dollars) per year.

Their hands-on approach includes providing on-going training every month to fresh produce gardeners and coconut oil producers, and conducting regular farm visits to help growers address any problems in their agricultural practice. The Ministry of Agriculture also supports organic farmers with advice on the best practices of managing land and soil without using chemicals.

WIBDI, which is organically certified by the National Association for Sustainable Agriculture in Australia, further acts as a link between small local producers and the global organics market, which has the potential to provide huge benefits: the global organic food market alone is estimated at more than 50 billion dollars.

“Our biggest success story would be our work with Body Shop International,” Stanley claimed. “Last year was the first year that we were able to meet demand. We sent just over 30 tonnes [to the Body Shop], which was amazing for our farmers with whom we have a fair trade relationship.”

The Samoan NGO is the international brand’s sole global supplier of certified organic virgin coconut oil, which is used in more than 60 countries and 30 different skincare products. WIBDI also exports organic dried bananas to New Zealand.

International partners are selected carefully to ensure that they are supporting not only the product, but the mission to help local rural families.

“Sharing similar values is very important to us because that helps the process of getting the farmers to where they would like to be,” Stanley said.

In contrast, the domestic market is growing slowly. Working to generate greater local support and interest in the nutritional benefits of organic fruit and vegetables, WIBDI arranges weekly deliveries direct from farmers to local customers, including about 16 local hotels and restaurants.

But for Sione on Savaii Island, in addition to monetary gains, there is also a long-term inter-generational benefit of organic farming, which requires that farming land is free of chemicals and pesticides.

“I will have healthy soil for passing my farm on to the next generation, for the future livelihood of my family,” he emphasised.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

By Andrew MacMillan
ROME, Jun 25 2014 (IPS)

The choice of foods displayed on supermarket shelves can be quite bewildering. This abundance encourages us to take it for granted that we will always be able to buy the food we want at affordable prices.

Any customers who give thought to how and where all the different foods are produced and end up in their shopping trolleys will start to uncover a rather disturbing situation.

They will find that in most countries, people working at all levels in the food system – in supermarkets, in meat processing and packing plants, as fruit harvesters or farm labourers, or as waitresses in fast-food restaurants – are among the worst paid of all workers.

Andrew MacMillan

They will discover that many of the skilled families that run the small-scale farms that produce most of the world’s food live precariously  They are exposed to multiple risks caused by fluctuating markets, pests and diseases and extreme weather problems, whether frosts, hailstorms, floods, typhoons or droughts.

They will also learn that in most developing countries hunger is heavily concentrated in rural areas, where some 70 percent of the world’s 842 million chronically hungry people live, largely dependent on farming, fishing and forestry. Much urban poverty results from people fleeing rural deprivation. And many of the conflicts that threaten global stability have their origins in areas of extreme poverty.

It seems dreadfully wrong that the very people who produce so much of our food should be those who suffer most from deep poverty and food shortages.

One reason for this apparently unjust situation is what economists call asymmetrical relationships in the food chain. For instance, supermarkets engage in cut-throat competition for customers by lowering their prices, reducing what they pay to their suppliers who, in turn, cut back on their workers’ pay.

Most governments like to keep food prices “affordable”, claiming that it makes food accessible to poor families, thereby preventing hunger and malnutrition. The main policy instruments used by rich and emerging nations include tax-funded subsidies that compensate their farmers for low-priced food sales. They also set low taxes on most foods.“It seems dreadfully wrong that the very people who produce so much of our food should be those who suffer most from deep poverty and food shortages”

The idea that low food prices will reduce the scale of the hunger problem is flawed since the main reason for people being hungry is that they cannot afford the food they need, even when prices are low.

Rather than, as now, shielding all consumers from paying a full and fair price for food, it seems to make more sense to let prices rise and increase the food buying power of the poor. As Fair Trade customers have discovered, higher retail prices can be passed back to all those involved in the food production chain, especially farm labourers. They probably offer the best market-driven option for cutting rural poverty and hunger.

But to eliminate hunger quickly, income transfers, targeted on poor families and with their value indexed to food prices, are also needed, at least until countries begin to manage their economies more equitably.

Policies that support low food prices, apart from exacerbating rural hunger, also add momentum to the other big food-related problems now facing the world, including:

• The serious mismatch between healthy diets and what people choose to eat as their incomes rise. This is most visible in the rapid rise in over-consumption of food, leading to more than 1.5 billion people being overweight or obese, creating a massive future health burden and huge losses in human productivity. It also shows up in the fast growth in demand for foods with high environmental footprints;

• The horrendous wastage of food at retail and household level, amounting to about 30% of output in industrialised countries (or more than the total annual net food production of Africa!);

• The rapid expansion of non-sustainable intensive farming systems. These are placing huge stresses on the increasingly scarce natural resources needed by future generations to meet their food needs – soils, fresh water, forests, marine fish stocks and biodiversity. They are also stoking the processes of climate change by generating large green-house gas emissions.

Many people think that the big food challenge for the future will be to produce enough to feed the hungry. Closing the hunger gap for over 800 million fellow humans, however, can be done today if we are willing to take direct measures to improve food access.

When I calculated what this would take, I was surprised to find that enabling all the world’s hungry to rise above the hunger threshold would raise demand by under 2 percent of present global food production.

Others see population growth as the main concern. Birth rates are dropping fast, but obviously further reductions will make the task of feeding the world easier. Interestingly, much of the growth in the number of mouths to feed – from 7 billion now to 9 billion in 2050 – will come from people living longer, the positive result of better hygiene, health and education.

The reality is that we who already have more than enough to eat and those who expect to emulate our unhealthy diets as their incomes rise are the main culprits, accounting for about half of the 60 percent increase in food demand forecast by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for 2050!

What seems to be needed now is to mainstream the concepts of fairness, healthy eating and sustainability throughout the food management system. We could usefully adopt the aspiration of the Slow Food movement that “all people can access and enjoy food that is good for them, good for those who grow it and good for the planet.”

Already many developing countries, inspired by the success of Brazil’s Zero Hunger programme, are starting to move in these directions. They are linking expanded social protection for poor families and the buying of food for school lunches to the promotion of small-scale sustainable farm development.

But industrialised countries must also deliver on their responsibilities for cutting their negative impacts on food management which hurt not only their people but also the rest of the world. A first move could be to redirect existing farm subsidies towards promoting healthy eating, cutting food wastage, and accelerating the necessary shift to farming systems that are truly sustainable from technical, environmental and social perspectives.

Rises in retail food prices would be part of the adjustment process, with consumers meeting a progressively rising share of “full and fair” production costs. Though they may complain, this should be readily affordable for the hundreds of millions of people who typically spend less than 20 percent of their disposable income on food. It will also be accessible for poorer families when they are served, as we propose, by expanded social protection.

If you think about it, it is a small price to pay for a healthier and safer world for us and our children! (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Excerpt:

By Monde Kingsley Nfor
DOUALA, Cameroon, Mar 19 2013 (IPS)

The fruit farmers in Njombe, a small town in the coastal Littoral Region of Cameroon, learned a life lesson about “making lemonade out of lemons” – or rather “dried fruit out of fruit” when their land was taken from them by the government and leased to an international farming company.

In 1998, 34 fruit farmers lost 70 hectares of their land to Plantation de Haut Penja (PHP), to which the Cameroonian government leased 4,500 hectares of land to grow bananas.

Ndomi Magareth, sows bean seeds on her small piece of land in Njombe. Credit: Monde Kingsley Nfor/IPS

By Monde Kingsley Nfor
DOUALA, Cameroon, Mar 14 2013 (IPS)

The fruit farmers in Njombe, a small town in the coastal Littoral Region of Cameroon, learned a life lesson about “making lemonade out of lemons” – or rather “dried fruit out of fruit” when their land was taken from them by the government and leased to an international farming company.

In 1998, 34 fruit farmers lost 70 hectares of their land to Plantation de Haut Penja (PHP), a subsidiary of French company Compagnie Fruitiere, to which the Cameroonian government leased 4,500 hectares of land to grow bananas.

But in 2003, thanks to the assistance and loans from the local NGO the Network for the Fight against Hunger (RELUFA), the farmers were able to purchase farmland in Njombe. The NGO also assisted the farmers with loans to buy fertilisers and chemicals and organised them in a cooperative called the Common Initiative Group (CIG) Esperance.

Bika Sadi is one of the farmers who has been growing bananas, pineapples and papaya on his new land and selling it to the dried fruit manufacturing business that RELUFA set up in 2009.

“We supply our products at set prices to the dried fruit project. A kilogramme of fresh papaya is sold at less than 20 cents on the local market, but the project buys it at 31 cents. And a kilogramme of fresh banana and pineapple sell for 10 cents on the local market but the project buys them for 24 cents,” Sadi told IPS.

The initiative, called the Fair Fruit project, sells oven-dried pineapples, mangoes, bananas and papaya. But it was born out of failed attempts by the farmers to obtain compensation for the loss of their land.

The Fair Fruit project, sells oven-dried pineapples, mangoes, bananas and papaya. But it was born out of failed attempts by the farmers to obtain compensation for the loss of their land. Courtesy: Monde Kingsley Nfor

The farmers took PHP to the Wouri High Court in Douala in 2005, and after five court appearances over three years, the company and the farmers reached an out-of-court settlement in 2008. However, only 28,000 of the 120,000 dollars promised in the negotiations were paid to the farmers.

A year later, Fair Fruit was created. The dried fruit packaging is clear about the reasons for the business. The label reads: “Fair Fruit is grown by Cameroonian farmers who were forced off their land by a transnational company seeking to establish its vast plantations. The fruit is cultivated and harvested in a just and environmentally friendly manner and traded under fair terms”.

Daniel Mahatma, a local fruit farmer in Njombe, manages the project that employs 10 people to work in the small processing plant built by RELUFA.

“The workers in this plant earn 2.50 dollars a day for five hours of work, which is a modest income for a youth who has the rest of the day for other activities,” Mahatma told IPS.

The dried fruit is packaged and then distributed to supermarkets, hotels and airports.

“We also sell the product to potential buyers through trade fairs and agro-pastoral shows,” Michelle Danleu, Fair Fruit’s sales and marketing officer, told IPS.

The profits have been ploughed back into the project and will fund a second phase.

In a country where an increasing number of smallholders have been forced off their land, the expansion of the project could help many more farmers like the ones in Njombe.

“Fair Fruit … could also tell the story of other marginalised farmers all over Cameroon,” Jaff Bamenjo, the assistant coordinator for RELUFA, told IPS.

“We are concerned about the new wave of investments in land and the negative impact on local food production and rural communities’ access to land,” Bamenjo added.

According to a 2012 Food and Agricultural Organization report titled “Investment Policy Support, Foreign Agricultural Investment Profile Cameroon”, the general foreign direct investment inflow into Cameroon was less than 113 million dollars in the 1990s, but reached 337 million dollars in 2009.

While there are no official figures on foreign agricultural investment in Cameroon, the report notes that some 48 percent of Cameroon’s population depend on agriculture for a living.

Even the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development is concerned about the number of large agricultural plantations in the country that have pushed smallholders off their land.

“Large plantations have a negative effect not only on local food production and supply, but they also affect the social economy of the locality where they exist. Added to the fact that most local farmers are usually evicted from farm lands, the farmers in most cases are restricted from farming close to the boundaries of plantations for fear that they might steal from the plantation farms,” Collette Ekobo, the agriculture inspector of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, told IPS.

As an agriculture inspector, Ekobo evaluates the performance of agricultural services, rural productivity and development in the sector and has authority to represent the ministry’s views.

“The complaints from farmers (kicked off their land) have been overwhelming in the Littoral and Southwest Region of the country, where most plantations are located,” she said, adding that she was unable to provide figures for the number of farmers affected.

She said the country’s current land tenure system “does not protect the interests of the locals who have been using these lands since the time of their forefathers.”

The land tenure system in Cameroon makes it difficult for private individuals to acquire title deeds. The 1974 Ordinance No. 74/1 on land tenure stipulates that private land must be titled and registered. All remaining land is classified as national land, which includes most unoccupied land, unregistered land, communal land held under customary law, informal settlements and grazing land.

However, obtaining a land right certificate is a costly and long administrative procedure.

Samuel Nguiffo, from the Centre for Environment and Development, Cameroon, told IPS that as a result most villagers had no formal land titles to their customary agricultural land.

“Land agreements given to large companies do not respect customary land rights or informal land holdings. The laws and the institutions in place do not protect their interests,” he said.

An inter-ministerial committee from the Ministry of State Property and Land Tenure is currently revising the land tenure law, and a bill will be introduced in parliament. But civil society groups complain that the process has not been participatory.

Nguiffo added that there was an assumption that foreign investors created more jobs than local smallholders, but said it was not a proven fact.

“If communities are given support through access to land, capital and technical assistance you will see them create jobs and wealth and contribute to national development more sustainably than large companies,” he said.

Meanwhile, on Jan. 16, PHP finally agreed to pay out the remainder of the settlement to the Njombe farmers. The reasons for this are unclear, but it could have had something to do with the labels on the dried fruit.

“As a precondition for the company to pay this money, they said we must remove the message that is on Fair Fruit packages. The farmers have agreed to this condition,” Bamenjo said.

A second-hand clothing store in the southern Spanish city of Málaga. Credit: Inés Benítez/IPS

By Inés Benítez
MÁLAGA, Spain, Feb 13 2013 (IPS)

The Spanish public is well aware of the widespread exploitation of workers in the globalised garment industry. But low prices, shrinking buying power and the lure of brand names act as strong disincentives to responsible clothes shopping.

“We know about the kinds of things that go on, but what can you do? In times of crisis like these, you can’t afford to buy much, and what you do buy has to be cheap,” says Virginia as she leaves a shop in a large shopping mall in the southern Spanish city of Málaga. “Those clothes are from Bangladesh, aren’t they?” she asks, pointing to a nearby window display.

Eva Kreisler, the coordinator of the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) in Spain, finds it “repugnant” that the women who manufacture clothing in countries like Bangladesh for big companies “subsidise low production costs for the companies and the low prices paid by consumers” by working for meagre salaries and in highly precarious conditions.The other day I was in a fair trade store and all I could do was look, because everything was so expensive...

Although Kreisler believes that there is greater awareness among the general public of the abuse and exploitation suffered by garment industry workers, “there is still a great deal that needs to be done.”

“The problem is that labour exploitation is structural,” and therefore requires the adoption of “structural measures” by big companies, she told IPS.

The CCC does not promote boycotts of specific brands or store chains. Instead, it calls on consumers to question the employment practices of garment manufacturers and to participate in campaigns to demand better pay for garment workers and compliance with international standards established by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

The CCC is an alliance of NGOs, trade unions and consumer advocacy groups in 14 European countries, which works in conjunction with a partner network of organisations and unions in garment-producing countries in Asia, Africa, Central America and Eastern Europe and cooperates extensively with similar labour rights campaigns in the United States, Canada and Australia.

Lourdes has worked for 11 years as a sales clerk at a shop run by the Spanish group Inditex, one of the world’s largest fashion retailers and owner of a number of different store chains including Zara, Pull & Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka and Stradivarius.

But Lourdes does not know what a code of conduct is, and has no idea if the company has adopted one or complies with it. She says that she has never been asked by a customer about where the clothes come from, and admits that she herself buys clothes without reading the labels.

When questioned by IPS about the working conditions of the people who manufacture the clothes, like a dress made in Romania and a tank top made in Turkey hanging in a nearby display, she replied, “I don’t know anything about that. The workers here are happy with the company.”

In the last three months, fires have broken out in factories in Bangladesh that manufacture clothing for Inditex, Gap, H&M and Levi’s, among other brands. Hundreds of women factory workers were killed in the fires.

In the latest, on Jan. 26, seven women died, four of them only 17 years old, reported Kreisler, who is pushing for companies with factories in Bangladesh to adopt a safety programme proposed by local and international unions to prevent tragedies like these. Two days after the fire, Inditex announced that it was cutting ties with suppliers in this South Asian country.

Ninety percent of workers in these factories are women, and most of them are from rural areas and are unaware of their rights, said Kreisler. There is also a strong anti-union climate in the country, she added. “Only one percent of workers in Bangladesh are unionised.”

“Workers are dying to produce the clothes we wear,” she said.

Purchasing “clean” clothes that are manufactured without these injustices can cost a bit more, however, and buying power in Spain is currently at record low levels.

“The other day I was in a fair trade store and all I could do was look, because everything was so expensive,” Virginia the shopper tells IPS while standing in front of a shop window in the mall announcing clearance discounts of 70 percent.

María, a salesperson in a cosmetics store, said she used to be more selective about where the clothes she purchased were made. “But not anymore.” And for one simple reason: she has less money to spend.

Mercedes walks between bins of clothing items that are all priced at just three euros. She says she reads the labels on clothes, knows about the cases of exploitation in the garment industry from the media, and wonders to herself, “How can they possibly charge such low prices?”

The power of large clothing chains and big name brands to demand low production costs has repercussions on the garment workers in supplier countries, explained Kreisler.

This is why she calls for a “change in mentality” when it comes to clothes shopping, which is quite often “compulsive and unnecessary” and overly influenced by fashion trends.

But the economic crisis in Spain has had other impacts on shopping behaviour. “It has made people more interested in second-hand clothes,” said Pepe Morales, a journalist who has also been managing a used clothing store in Málaga for the last year and a half.

Second-hand clothes shopping is not as widespread and well-established in Spain as in the United Kingdom and the Nordic countries, “but this is a good time for things to change,” said Laura Rubio, coordinator of the Spanish Association of Social and Solidarity Economy Recyclers.

The association is an alliance of non-profit groups that provide environmentally friendly services, like the reuse and recycling of used clothes, while also offering job training and employment opportunities for disadvantaged sectors of the population.

“We try to increase the useful life of clothing by promoting reuse,” through a chain of second-hand stores, Rubio told IPS.

In Málaga, the Cudeca Foundation operates a dozen second-hand shops stocked with donated clothes and uses the profits to help finance a hospice for cancer patients.

The shops are run by a network of more than 400 volunteers. UK native Katie O’Neill, who is the coordinator of the shops, stressed the importance of “giving clothes a second life”.

Clothes should not be thrown in the garbage, because this harms the environment, she said. Instead, they should be placed in containers designated for textile recycling, she told IPS, while nearby a man hands a volunteer a jacket that is still “in perfect condition”.

According to business owners consulted by IPS, the crisis has also given a welcome boost to services such as clothing alterations and shoe repairs, which are in growing demand as people seek to make their clothes and footwear last longer.

*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the World Bank.

The economic and financial crisis afflicting the countries of the European Union (EU) has scarcely affected sales of fair trade products from Latin America, especially food products, in Spain.

“The impact of the crisis on fair trade varies according to the type of product and the channel of distribution. It has had less of an effect on goods from Latin America and on sales in large retail stores,” Gonzalo Donaire, director of research at the State Coordinator of Fair Trade (CECJ), told Tierramérica.

The CECJ groups together around 30 organisations involved in this alternative trade system.

Coffee grower Lourdes Altamirano from the Nicaraguan cooperative Aldea Global, which produces Tierra Madre coffee. Credit:Courtesy of Intermón Oxfam

In 2010, sales of fair trade goods in Spain totaled 22.5 million euro (28.2 million dollars), which represents an increase of 24.2 percent over 2009 and 33.6 percent over 2008, according to a CECJ study based on sales by its member organisations of products certified by Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International (FLO).

FLO grants authorisation for the use of the Fairtrade label to producers and traders who meet a series of standards, including the payment of decent wages and safe and healthy working conditions, respect for the environment, elimination of child labor, gender equity, and the reinvestment of profits in community development.

Food products, especially coffee, sugar and cocoa, account for almost 70 percent of sales of Fairtrade certified goods on the Spanish market. They are followed by crafts (25 percent), imported from 24 different countries (nine in Latin America, nine in Asia, five in Africa and one in the Middle East), according to the report “El comercio justo en España 2010: Crisis, impactos y alternativas” (Fair Trade in Spain 2010: Crisis, impacts and alternatives), published by the CECJ in July 2011.

Of the 35 countries that supply fair trade food products to the Spanish market through CECJ importers, 15 are in Latin America, nine are in Asia and eight are in Africa, the report notes.

“We have noticed a significant drop in sales of crafts and ornaments,” Mercedes García, the marketing coordinator at Alternative and Solidarity Economy Initiatives (IDEAS), told Tierramérica.

IDEAS is a fair trade cooperative that has worked on cooperation projects with Latin America for 20 years and primarily imports food products like organic brown sugar.

The sugar comes from the Ecuadorian association Maquita Cushunchic-Comercializando Como Hermanos (MCCH). (“Maquita cushunchic” means “let’s join hands” in the Quechua indigenous language, while “comercializando como hermanos” is Spanish for “trading like brothers and sisters”.) The MCCH represents 400 rural and urban cooperatives that produce food and textile products, and trains them in business self-management and financial administration.

While sales of food products were hardly affected in 2010 by the impacts of the crisis, and even grew by 0.4 percent, craft sales fell by 44.5 percent, according to the CECJ study.

Twenty years ago, two out of every three fair trade products sold in Spain were crafts. By contrast, “since the beginning of the decade, the trend has been a slowdown in craft sales and increasingly higher sales of food products,” said Donaire.

García believes that the economic crisis has contributed to more “responsible” consumption in Spain: people are eating out less and are more interested in a healthy diet.

Donaire also believes that the crisis has also made consumers more conscientious. Alongside the “indignant” protest movement, there has been an upsurge in support for fair trade initiatives. “The recession is helping to reawaken critical awareness among consumers,” he said.

Spain is undergoing its biggest spending cuts since democracy was restored in 1977, with the aim of reducing its budget deficit from 8.5 percent of GDP to 5.3 percent, as demanded by the EU.

Moreover, with an unemployment rate of over 20 percent, there is little room in the budgets of most Spaniards for luxuries.

Since 2008, FLO-certified products have begun to be sold in large retail stores, supermarkets and coffee shop chains. This has had an impact on shops run by fair trade organisations and other small businesses, where the impact of the crisis has been felt in declining sales.

“The crisis has changed people’s shopping habits. They now prefer to shop in supermarkets and big stores, and are buying less from the fair trade shops operated by organisations,” said Donaire, who highlighted the increase in sales of certified products in these new market niches.

Donaire believes that the challenge lies in determining whether, once the crisis has passed, these small specialised shops will regain their role as the driving force in the growth of the fair trade market, or whether the new distribution channel of supermarkets and big retailers will maintain its dominance.

“We consider any increase in sales to be positive, because it means more income,” he said. But sales through smaller shops contribute added advantages, such as raising awareness through more personalised customer service and political advocacy.

The director of access to fair trade markets at the non-governmental organisation Intermón Oxfam, Juanjo Martínez, told Tierramérica that between 2007 and 2008 there was a significant drop in sales. But in the last three years, “they have remained stable at around eight million euro (10 million dollars) annually.”

The incorporation of fair trade products by mainstream brands has helped to boost the sector and offset the declining sales in small shops, Martínez acknowledged.

Intermón Oxfam recently launched Tierra Madre coffee in Spain. It is produced by the Nicaraguan women’s cooperative Aldea Global (“Global Village” in Spanish). Aside from providing the women producers with an income, the initiative also assists them in obtaining property titles for the land on which they grow their coffee.

All in all, spending on fair trade products in Spain was close to 600 dollars per 1,000 inhabitants in 2010, almost 10 times the European average, according to the CECJ report.

Although sales have tripled since 2000, said Donaire, “we still need to do a great deal more.”

*The writer is an IPS correspondent. This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.