Fighting the Banana Wars and Other Fairtrade Battles by Harriet Lamb

Author:Harriet Lamb [Harriet Lamb]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781407024332
Publisher: Ebury Publishing

John Kanjagaile is a lively and young-looking fifty-three, a shrewd business brain, a quick wit and a democrat through and through. His wide cheeks are always breaking into a big smile as he plays on the meaning of words, slapping people on the back, laughing readily. But he's deeply serious about the business of change.

John is the perfect guide to how Fairtrade coffee actually moves from crop to cup. As well as working closely with the coffee farmers he farms himself. He also rubs shoulders with the traders who buy every week in Tanzania's national coffee auction – and deals directly with importers and roasters all over the world. As a member of the FLO Certification Committee, he checks through applications and inspection reports from farmers' groups wanting to join or remain on the register of Fairtrade producers. He's also used to persuading consumers and businesses to go Fairtrade.

So he knows each of the three pillars which support the Fairtrade system: the farmers' organisations and the regional organisations that represent them like the African Fairtrade Network; the international Fairtrade body FLO which sets the standards and issues certificates to producers that meet them – also providing regular checks to ensure producers and companies are abiding by the rules; and the organisations, like the Fairtrade Foundation in Britain, that issue licences to companies to use the FAIRTRADE Mark and promote the Fairtrade habit amongst the buying public.

But when I meet him he's doing his day job. He's the Export Manager for the Kagera Cooperative Union (KCU), with its 60,000 farmers in 125 local village co-operatives scattered across hilly countryside on the western shores of Lake Victoria in north-west Tanzania. John is based, not in Kagera, but in the main trading centre for the Tanzanian coffee business in Moshi near Mount Kilimanjaro.

'I am a child of the co-operative. My family are coffee farmers and KCU paid for my schooling. It's in my blood,' he tells me. John did well at school. He went on to study to be an accountant and then worked as a taxman. But he always felt the call of his community and wanted to put something back.

'I have about sixty trees. Prices fell so low, coffee became like a hobby. But I couldn't abandon my trees. I inherited them from my father and grandfather. I came to look on my trees as you go swimming or play football. One man considered cutting down his trees but his friend said, "What will you talk about with the other men?" Low prices are good for the international corporations that sell coffee, but not for us. When I sell Fairtrade I get three times as much as I would normally – so I can send three children to school instead of one.'

In 1986 he resigned from his government job and joined the cooperative because 'it's doing the right thing for the people of Kagera region'. He's worked his way up to become the Export Manager – employed by the farmers through the co-operative to find buyers for their coffee abroad and a better income from their coffee.

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