Fairtrade editorial - Southland Times

Riverton is a canny choice to become, maybe, the first Fairtrade town in New Zealand.

Towns and cities with this designation – and there are more than 1000 of them in 20 countries – have shown collective, practical support for the goals of the movement supporting producer organisations to deliver sustainable livelihoods for farmers, workers and their communities.

Aparima College pupil Hollie Guyton has set up a committee to bring Fairtrade status to her school and town.
Riverton is an excellent introductory town for this to happen in Southland; it's a compact community with pretty good Green credentials due, at least in some part, to the influence of Hollie's parents, Robert and Robyn Guyton: Green activists in the political sense – he is an Environment Southland councillor – and the practical, as witnessed by the splendid South Coast Environment Centre Open Orchard project to revive fruit growing in Southland.

As things stand none of New Zealand's small towns has the Fairtrade endorsement. But that's not because it's some loopy scheme.

The fact that Dunedin, Wellington and Auckland do have this status should reassure those who might otherwise assume it entails a collective ban on all products that haven't received the big green benediction.Not so.

The towns simply have to meet goals including a sufficient range of Fairtrade products being available; demonstrable support from a local council resolution and participation from the likes of schools, workplaces, places of worship and community organisations; a steering group, and – well, they can tick this one off – media coverage.

Fairtrade has been gaining traction throughout the country, sales last year rising 24 per cent to $45 million.

For the most part that's been coffee and chocolate, although bananas, tea, sugar and cotton clothing also figure. And the range of products is ever-broadening. Auckland Grammar, don't you know, has switched to Fairtrade certified sports balls, made by workers paid an acceptable minimum wage, rather than being handstitched by impoverished Pakistani children.

Fairtrade consumables are supplied from farmers receiving fair and stable prices aimed to cover the cost of sustainable production as well as a premium to be invested in social, environmental and economic projects in their own developing communities. (A few New Zealand farmers might, in their darker moments, wonder whether they qualify ... ).

Mutterings against Fairtrade tend to be that it puts the consumer in a position of choosing between a locally made product and one from a developing nation, with all those wicked extra food kilometres and carbon footprints. But the products are not commonly grown or produced locally and – as New Zealand often has to point out to its own trading partners – air miles aren't the only determinants of virtue.

So, for instance, compare and contrast the options of cotton from African farmers on the brink of starvation or from subsidised United States farmers.

Will Riverton embrace the scheme? It might do. The town surely seems a logical starting point, and one which could then give other communities a local basis for comparison.

Ms Guyton's group aspires to convince other areas in Southland, and Invercargill city, to take part. Seems reasonable.

- © Fairfax NZ News

Miss Guyton does good

(Reproduced verbatim from today's Southland Times)

An Aparima College student is setting out to make Riverton the first Fairtrade Town in New Zealand, a goal which is impressing national organisers.
College student Hollie Guyton, 17, said it was a goal that could easily be achieved by year end. She had set up a meeting with the Southland District Council and hoped it could help. Riverton was a community with many farmers, who agreed it was important to help farmers overseas get paid a fair price, she said.
She set up a committee to transform her school and Riverton into Fairtrade places. The committee of about 17 students took their cause into the wider Riverton community, who have embraced the idea.
"We have been campaigning around the town and businesses have been receptive," Miss Guyton said.
Five businesses were on board and the committee aimed to turn all workplaces to Riverton Fairtrade before the end of the year.
To be Fairtrade certified businesses would have to promote Fairtrade and use its products.
Aparima College Fairtrade committee member Jacob Brown said he explained to businesses that Fairtrade helped everyone involved with the products.
"The worker and farmer in developing countries get paid real wages and can feed their families and lift their lives out of poverty," he said. Miss Guyton and her committee now plan to convince other areas in Southland to take part.
They also plan to work with Invercargill schools to achieve Fairtrade City status for the city. Fairtrade New Zealand marketing and communications officer Angus Coull said New Zealand had three Fairtrade cities: Dunedin, Wellington and Auckland but no small towns as yet.
"Riverton is doing an awesome job for its small size. It really stands out because it has achieved a lot and I commend the school pupils for implementing and recommending Fairtrade," he said.
If Riverton achieved town status, it would be the most southern Fairtrade Town in the world.


COLLETTE DEVLIN


- © Fairfax NZ News