By SHAY CULLEN
Panfil is a 57-year-old carpenter and mango farmer from Moriki, Kapalong, Davao Del Norte. He planted 51 mango trees in 1986 and now he earns about P20,000 annually by selling his harvest to Preda Fair Trade, a social development organization.
His current profit from mangos, he said, is almost double of what he will earn from commercial buyers who will reject half of his harvest because they do not accept undersized and bruised fruits.
But Preda Fair Trade buys all his produce. The organization accepts undersized and bruised mangos because they process these into food products. Panfil also gets a premium pay for every kilo of mango—a profit share from Preda.
This kind of trading encourages small-scale farmers like Panfil to plant mangos and other fruit- bearing trees. Above all, it helps him keep his family together and sends his kids to school.
Doing justice for farmers who have been exploited and impoverished for generations is what fair trade is all about. It is a combination of trade and social justice. It helps people become self-reliant and brings justice into the market place. It is what we need in the developing world to end poverty and misery. It is being a decent business person paying a fair price and giving poor farmers the dignity they deserve.
It is immoral to take advantage of poor farmers considering their great need to sell their produce and desperation to earn money no matter how small.
Exploitation robs poor people of their energy, and initiative to plant and grow and toil. The rich blame them for their poverty and laziness when in fact they hardly work because they are malnourished as they were exploited and cheated. They get sick and tired because in the end of all their hard work their produce is worth so little. This is the cause of dire poverty, and there is much of it in the Philippines.
Because of unfair trading system, the poor remain poor and their malnourished children have to work to help ends meet. This is the curse of the unjust system run by the rich, dynastic families that rule this country.
But the champions who work for justice in trade and human rights have put aside personal interests and have dedicated themselves to the cause of alleviating poverty. They are the grassroots people who made the Preda Fair Trade movement grow.
Developmental fair trade implemented by Preda Fair Trade focuses on overcoming injustice, making a better future for the poor and oppressed people, and transforming society and the way people think about the people in the developing world.
We don’t want people to buy Preda Fair Trade products as an act of charity out of pity. We people to buy them because they are quality, desirable and valuable products, and because they are fairly traded and not the product of exploitation or child labor.
One billion are still hungry on this planet of plenty. It just so happens that the wealth is accumulated by the few while the many go without the basic needs of life. The champions of fair trade are those who have challenged this inequality that causes much human suffering and death by hunger and disease.
The goal of Preda Development Fair Trade is to help people to overcome poverty by their own efforts, earning just wages and returns for their hard work and improving their communities through team and community self-help development projects.
The success of fair trade relies greatly on the quality of the products, the just wages and conditions under which they are made. But it equally depends on the choice of consumers to act in a morally right way and to choose to buy fair trade products rather than commercially supplied ones.
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