This session will provides an opportunity to consider how you can actively demonstrate personal responsibility as a global citizen by developing an understanding of fair trade issues and to look at why equity (fairness) and justice are necessary in a sustainable community. 

 

Discuss these two case studies. What can be done to help the farmers in these two countries?

 

 

CASE STUDY 1 : GHANAIAN TOMATO FARMERS AND ITALIAN SUBSIDIES

Many Ghanaian tomato farmers can’t sell their tomatoes. It isn’t because their tomatoes are bad or rotten, it’s because Ghana has been bombarded with cheap tomato products from Italy. Ghana’s tomato farmers are blighted by world trade rules that work for rich countries but leave poor countries out in the cold. Italian tomato farmers receive millions of pounds of financial help (subsidies from the government) to process their tomatoes, meaning they can sell them cheaply, but Ghanaian farmers aren’t allowed the same help.

 

You can’t blame Ghana’s buying public – if you had the choice of paying £1.50 for Italian tomato paste or £2.50 for the Ghanaian equivalent, which would you go for? But with no demand for Ghanaian tomato paste, there’s no demand for Ghanaian tomatoes. Processing factories have closed down leading to job losses. Meanwhile tomato farmers sell their tomatoes at the roadside for whatever they can get. [source: Christian Aid]

 

 

 

CASE STUDY 2 : CARIBBEAN BANANAS AND THE WORLD TRADE ORGANISATION

Changing trade rules are pitting Caribbean family farms against the might of multinational plantations, threatening the livelihoods of thousands of farmers.

 

Windward Islands bananas make up less than 2% of the world export market, which is dominated by multinational companies in Latin America. But that hasn’t stopped the multinationals from pushing for an end to the Windward Islands’ trade agreement with Europe, which has protected them from competition.

 

For many years, the people of the Windward Islands were able to make a modest living from growing bananas by exporting most of them to the UK. Over time, the islands’ economies became completely dependent on bananas and the UK market.

 

But since the early 1990s, Europe – in response to a successful World Trade Organisation (WTO) challenged by the USA and multinationals- has changed the Windward Islands’ preferential trade relationship, pitting the Caribbean farmers against the might of the multinationals. The small family plots tended by the Windward Island farmers are a far cry from the vast, highly mechanized plantations in Latin America.

 

Multinationals use huge amounts of toxic pesticides on banana plantations to grow the ‘perfect looking’ bananas that consumers have come to expect. These chemicals do not just affect the banana plants onto which they are applied, but also the people applying them and the environment in which they grow. DBCP, one of the chemicals used until recently, caused sterility or genetic mutation when pregnant women came into contact with it. One third of the pesticides in the world are used in the banana industry. Waste products end up in the waterways, adding to increased sedimentation and water poisoning. The once thriving coral reefs along Costa Rica’s coast are now over 90% dead as a result of water poisoning.

 

As Windward Islands farmers struggle to deal with the competition with Latin America – on top of falling banana prices and heavy increases in the production costs – the future of their industry looks bleak. More and more farmers are being forced to consider other employments, and there isn’t much of that around. The people have fallen into deeper poverty, social problems and violence in the islands has increased.