Miles Litvinoff - 50 Reasons to Buy Fair Trade

Praise for 50 Reasons to Buy Fair Trade

A lively, accessible and inspiring survey of how fair trade is bringing new hope to poor producers around the world.

Paul Chandler, Chief Executive, Traidcraft

The best and most comprehensive guide around to the principles and practice of fair trade.

Joanna Blythman, food writer and campaigner

A wonderfully inspiring and uplifting book, which demonstrates the power of the personal choices we make as consumers. 50 Reasons to Buy Fair Trade not only offers 50 powerful reasons to choose fairly traded goods, but also tells us some of the compelling stories behind the products. And while each of the stories is very different, the message remains the same: fair trade changes lives. The fair trade movement is one of the great success stories of our time and this book bears witness to its growing strength and importance.

Dr Caroline Lucas, Green Party MEP for South-East England

This well-researched, balanced and inspiring book is a great guide to how and why the empowered individual can make a difference. This book educates and empowers the WTO board should read it and learn from it.

Craig Sams, founder of Green & Blacks

This book captures the spirit of our times. We live in a risky and divided world and though as an individual you cant do everything, you can do something or, as this book shows, 50 things. This book is a celebration of social justice.

Ed Mayo, Chief Executive, National Consumer Council

Want that really pithy example to convince a sceptic you are right when it comes to the way the world is headed for oblivion but doesnt have to be? Its here. Want to be surprised by how much you can make a difference? Try this book. Eloquent voices from around the world will compel and provoke you, reason by reason, to act differently!

Pauline Tiffen, founder of Cafdirect and the Day Chocolate Company

50 Reasons to Buy Fair Trade is a extensively researched piece of work that defies all myths that fair trade doesnt work.

Wendy Martin, Editor, New Consumer magazine

Buying fair trade goods is one of the most direct ways a consumer in the North can help some of the poorest people in the world to get a decent price for their products. As 50 Reasons to Buy Fair Trade shows, fair trades impact goes much wider, forcing governments and corporations to rethink the way they do business.

Duncan Green, Head of Research, Oxfam

Quietly, against the odds, fair trade has emerged as a powerful social force. But there are even more powerful forces against it: not just nasty, thoughtless companies or people, but all of us desiring things on the cheap. Sometimes we dont know what lies behind the goods; sometimes we bury our heads, denying the hidden costs, pretending we dont know. This book gives powerful reasons why that tension in modern consumer culture cannot go on and why the fair trade movement is not about being worthy or wallowing in guilt, but about changing what we do and injecting justice into what otherwise easily becomes a brutal world.

Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy, City University, London

Buying fair trade is one of the most practical actions consumers can take against exploitation by the multinationals. This highly readable book shows how and why.

Patricia Barnett, founder and Director, Tourism Concern

Fair trade allows people to act to use their power as consumers to make a difference. 50 Reasons to Buy Fair Trade will encourage many more to join them, and thats good news for producers in developing countries, the partners they work with in the UK, and their growing legion of customers.

James Niven, Triodos Bank

Provides a lively and important reminder that fair trade provides consumers with a way to take individual positive action in solidarity with the poor.

Benedict Southworth, Director, World Development Movement

While fair trade is complex, 50 Reasons to Buy Fair Trade has untangled the issues and lays them out clearly in excellent easy-to-read chapters.

Stefan Durwael, Executive Director, International Fair Trade Association

This book is illuminating, accessible, and above all, empowering.

Jeremy Seabrook, author of Consuming Cultures: Globalisation and Local Lives

This timely and well-researched publication confronts those doubtful of the effectiveness of fair trade as an instrument for sustainable development with substantiated evidence. Litvinoff and Madeleys extensive overview of the advantages inherent to the logic of fair trade contributes dearly to the cause of increased justice in international trade.

Dr Frithjof Schmidt MEP, European Parliament Rapporteur on Fair Trade

Fresh and clear as a see-thru mint. If this doesnt persuade you to support fair trade, nothing will.

Anuradha Vittachi, OneWorld.net

In showing how buying fair trade products can support a range of social and environmental goals, 50 Reasons reminds us that trade is simply the interaction between all of us and reflects our level of consciousness as humans today. Litvinoff and Madeley show us a range of reasons for thinking, living and, yes, shopping, as one people on one planet. Those of us who have the knowledge and opportunity to do something about the fragmentation between people and nature that exists in mainstream commerce no longer have any option but to change it, and ourselves.

Dr Jem Bendell, Senior Strategic Advisor, World Wide Fund for Nature

A first-class guide, without ducking the issues, to why being a smart consumer makes sense. Whether youre a fair trade fanatic or wondering whether to start, this book will give you lots of new reasons to be a smart consumer. Buy it and help change the world through the way you shop.

Richard Bennett, General Secretary, BOND; former Chair, Make Poverty History

Miles Litvinoff and John Madeley have done a service in writing this book. It will, I hope, make a contribution to a world where the people who produce goods that enhance our lives receive a return that also enhances theirs.

Wendy Craig, actor

50 Reasons to Buy
Fair Trade

Miles Litvinoff and John Madeley

Pluto Press

London Ann Arbor, MI

For

Gillian and Stephen

Cecilia

and fair trade producers around the world

First published 2007 by Pluto Press

345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA

and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106

www.plutobooks.com

Copyright Miles Litvinoff and John Madeley 2007

The right of Miles Litvinoff and John Madeley to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Hardback

ISBN-13 978 0 7453 2585 9

ISBN-10 0 7453 2585 8

Paperback

ISBN-13 978 0 7453 2584 2

ISBN-10 0 7453 2584 X

PDF eBook

ISBN-13 978 1 8496 4334 4

Kindle eBook

ISBN-13 978 1 7837 1389 9

EPUB eBook

ISBN-13 978 1 7837 1388 2

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Curran Publishing Services, Norwich Printed and bound in the European Union by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne, England

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