According to annual results from the Max Havelaar Foundation, the Dutch bought more Fair trade bananas than conventional bananas last year. In 2014 more than 100 million Fair trade bananas were eaten, an increase of 10 million from the year before. Fair trade banana plantations and cooperatives received € 1.6 million in premiums.
Decoy
Many supermarkets use low price bananas as bait for consumers. When this happens it is unclear how much is left over for the banana farmers and workers. Peter d'Angremond, director of the Max Havelaar Foundation says, "I would like to see supermarkets guarantee banana farmers a minimum price that would give the farmers more opportunities to invest in their future. PLUS and Spar have proven that fair trade pays off. They have completely moved over to fair trade bananas that have strict requirements on payment to farmer and worker organizations, and they sold more bananas last year."
Growth
The premium is directly linked to the sale of fair trade products in the Netherlands, which increased 8% last year to a retail value of € 213 million.
This increase is consistent with research that GfK has done, which showed that the number of households that buy fair trade products has risen by 6%. This is 500,000 more households than in 2013. As a result, farmers' organizations and plantations received more than € 5.2 million in premiums, which has been invested in, among other things, training for sustainable production, quality improvement and health care.
Challenges
Climate change is a major challenge for fair trade growers, and especially difficult for coffee growers. Due to the rise in temperature and unpredictable rainfall, farmers are seeing their coffee bushes produce fewer beans, and sometimes even struggle to survive. Together with ICCO, FairClimate and the Ethiopian coffee cooperative OCFCU, Max Havelaar started the Fair trade Carbon Partnership. This partnership supports coffee farmers in the fight against climate change. As a part of this program Jumbo (supermarket) introduced the first climate neutral fair trade coffee last year.