While millions of farmers are sinking further into the spiral of poverty and debt, working ever harder, producing more, but receiving less, some buyers and retail companies are recording record profits.
What is Traidcraft doing?
Traidcraft has been trading in commodity products including tea, coffee, sugar and cotton for many years. We also work to build the capacity of producers and help them to improve the quality of their products.
We are now working to link our trading, support and influencing work more closely by investigating the factors which cause these long term price declines and prevent farmers from receiving a fair return for their work. These include issues such as global oversupply – sometimes caused by rich-country government subsidies, lack of competition amongst buyers, low levels of coordination amongst farmers and bad advice from aid donors.
Read our report on the Tea sector (Oxctober 2007)
This report looks at the complex supply chain bringing together some of the world’s most powerful companies with some of its most vulnerable farmers. This report considers the UK element of the supply chain, and suggests ways that tea buyers, as well as investors, consumers and the UK government can contribute to more responsible purchasing.
