Harriet Lamb - Fighting the Banana Wars and Other Fairtrade Battles

Every time a shopper picks a product with the FAIRTRADE Mark off a supermarket shelf that person is showing how profit and principle can go together. The story of Fairtrade is not about how we can buck the market but about how we can bend it, to serve the people who are at the bottom end of a supply chain that stretches from some of the poorest parts of the world to some of its richest regions.

As a foreign correspondent I crossed that great divide myself many times. I took pictures of the destitute and diffident, and beamed them into sitting rooms across Britain. The places changed but the core of what I did remained the same: I described the problem, but didn't stay on to help find a solution. How often I wished I could offer help, how often I wanted to rail against the injustice I saw around me. But as a reporter you move on; the phone rings and you are on another plane to yet another story.

The invitation to become Patron of the Fairtrade Foundation changed all that for me. Here was my chance to become a part of the solution. So many of the conflicts I had witnessed were rooted in poverty. It is when we have nothing in our back pockets that we are most tempted by the warlord who would place our children in harm's way or the politician who would persuade us that our situation is all about tribe or ethnicity. But when we know there is money to feed the family today and there is the promise of more to come to educate our children tomorrow we are muchless likely to listen to the hate-mongers. That is precisely what Fairtrade does. Its offer of a stable income is the best protection against violence and insecurity.

Today nearly half the households in Britain have bought a Fairtrade product in the last year. Every major supermarket and scores of independent shops in Britain are now playing their part in making sure their customers can choose Fairtrade. It is a remarkable achievement and all the more so given how competitive Britain's supermarkets are on both price and quality. It's not been easy. With honesty and insight, this book charts the journey of the Fairtrade movement, its high and lows, its successes and failures. It tells the story of Fairtrade from its hesitant but hopeful beginnings to what it is today a mainstream option for millions of shoppers, and therefore also for farmers and workers.

Fighting the Banana Wars and Other Fairtrade Battles offers a compelling eye-witness account from someone at the heart of the campaign to make us re-think the way we do our shopping. From her encounters with farmers desperate for change, with activists who want it all and more, to boardroom executives with their bottom-line scepticism, Harriet Lamb has managed to get behind the facts and figures of Fairtrade; in this book she has revealed its soul. 'Soul' what a word to use when all around you people are talking about markets and margins! What's 'soul' got to do with the business of buying and selling coffee, the world's second most traded commodity after oil? Who cares about 'soul' when share prices have to be kept buoyant and costs kept to a minimum? The Fairtrade movement that's who cares.

I remember attending a meeting in London that brought together all the varied, and sometimes competing, players in the Fairtrade movement. The supermarket staff with their PowerPoint pie charts were there. They sat next to church-hall supporters from rural towns in Britain. Mingling with them were farmers from far-flung countries, twitching at collars too tight on necks more accustomed to the heat of a tropical sun. One speaker was talking about how the FAIRTRADE Mark was taking on the status of a brand logo, its blue and green symbol instantly conveying its own message. I was chairing the meeting and saw a hand go up it was a farmer from South America. In halting English but in words I still remember, this man encapsulated the spirit of Fairtrade. 'I ask you, my friends, to remember one thing,' he said. 'Fairtrade is more than a brand, it is a people.'

Above all, Fighting the Banana Wars and Other Fairtrade Battles is about the farmers, workers and their families for whom Fairtrade has been a lifeline in a trading world that has yet to offer them the level playing field they have been promised for decades. This is the story of how they have helped create Fairtrade, with the support of shoppers overseas, and so brought tangible, measurable change to many people's lives change with dignity because this is about a fair exchange. When you meet the farmers, their pride shines through: pride in their perfectly kept account books and neat plots, pride in their new warehouse or school, pride that they are themselves selling quality products on world markets, but above all else pride in their ambitions and their bold dreams for the future.