Fair products for the Mother’s Day table

“On Sunday, all mothers should only get fair traded products such as flowers, chocolate and bananas that enable people in the countries of origin to a fair income,” recalls Reinhard Heierer, Managing Director of Youth, a world in the run -up to Mother’s Day. The coming weekend is a great opportunity to point out the importance of fair trade relationships. The “World Fair Trade Day” will be celebrated worldwide on the day before Mother’s Day on May 10th.

In addition to promoting disadvantaged children and adolescents, the Austrian development organization Youth. Heierer: “Only a fair trade contributes to better living and working conditions in the global south and sustainability, our prosperity here in Austria must not be based on the exploitation of the people there, to destroy their environment.” Fairtrade standards with minimum prices and premiums help, for example, farmers’ families in the global south to receive a fairer wage for their tough work: “This enables you to get school education for your children. This is a crucial step to break through the cycle of poverty.”

Fair wages opens the door to education

Fairtrade focuses on this year’s “World Fair Trade Day” as a symbol of fair consumption. The popular yellow south fruit stands for many products, the cultivation of which is often associated with hard, poorly paid working conditions. In Austria, every third banana sold is already a fair. Finally, more than 30,000 tons of fair bananas were eaten in Germany. What makes a significant difference for farmers’ families and employees in growing countries such as the Dominican Republic, Peru or Ecuador: they benefited from direct income of approximately $ 20 million that were licked in Austria alone.

So if you use fair products, for example, families in Ecuador will help “open the door to education for your children.” Ecuador is considered the country that exports most bananas worldwide. In 2023, around 4 million tons of bananas from the small South American country were exported. The banana plantations, especially in the coastal to the Amazon-Fühland, are largely dominated by a few large (family) companies. The rest of the small farmers, which produce together in producer associations, which produce in producer associations, which produce under fairs, also biologically good conditions. “It is precisely such producers to promote,” emphasizes Heierer.

Help for indigenous families

Youth one world has been involved in Ecuador for years and supports initiatives of the “Fondo Ecuatoriano Populorum Progressio (FePP)”, which small farmers, for example, provide microcredits so that they can produce and market their products under fair conditions. Especially in the Amazon-Fühland, indigenous communities such as the Kichwas are fighting against the consequences of the deforestation of the rainforest through agricultural, mining and oil industries. Indigenous families There are helped to improve the cultivation of coffee, cocoa and medicinal plants, and to protect the rainforest and to carry out reforestation. Heierer: “If families have a reliable income, they can enable their children to attend school – and thus a better future.”