Cuba, Co-op's and Hurricanes

Each day I enjoy a co-operative and fair-trade breakfast of coffee, muesli and banana and raise a glass to Cuba. Not because new Labour has driven me to drink - my toast is not with rum but with Cuban orange juice.

In the 1980’s Cuba was the world’s largest citrus fruit exporter. The end of the USSR took away their main market and put them in direct competition with two of the big citrus fruit exporters the USA and Israel.

Today Cuba is the world’s laboratory for sustainable farming and food sovereignty – the World Bank has described it as “almost the anti-model”- pursuing an approach that links ecology with the decentralisation of the control of farms. Co-operatives are playing a key part in these developments.

The US blockade makes market access crucial. In 2000, Traidcraft, the Christian based fair trade organisation stepped in to help seven co-operatives in and around Ciego de Avila find new markets and help them to win Fair-trade status. Working alongside Gerber foods they are bringing first class Cuban fruit juices to European consumers and in developing the Fruit Passion brand aim to do for fruit juice what Café Direct has done for fair-trade coffee.

Modern consumers are increasingly concerned about the provenance of what they buy from the developing world and thanks to the Fairtrade Foundation there has been a huge increase in quality making the fair trade an easier choice to make. Fair-trade is not socialism but the Fair-trade mark does guarantee farmers a minimum price and an additional 'premium' payment. In Cuba the premium is used for projects that benefit the co-operatives - better machinery, vehicles, irrigation systems etc. or to finance other activities including cultural and recreational facilities.
The Association of Small Farmers (ANAP) representing the interests of co-operatives and individual farmers are also working to increase the involvement of women in the farms and their decision making processes.

Last year I visited the region of Cuba where these co-ops are based and the extra income fair trade brings can make a real difference. One of the dreadful things about capitalism is the way the abstraction of the market separates consumers from producers.

Now Traidcraft are running meet the people tours to Cuba in November, February or March visiting the CPA and CCS Jose Marti Co-operatives in Ciego de Avila that produce the juice that is so welcome on our breakfast tables.

Writing in Granma, Fidel Castro, points out that the recent hurricanes have done between $3 and $4 billion dollars worth of damage to Cuba. Farmers have not escaped unscathed and to help their recovery the least we can do is buy some of their output. So why wait? You can find Fruit Passion in Co-op shops as well as in Sainsbury’s and Waitrose, also the Co-op’s own brand fair-trade orange juice includes Cuban product in the blend.

Of course the concept of fair trade is not new. Back in 1906 the first Labour MP’s cited John Ruskin as the author who had most shaped their thinking. Ruskin makes a plea for fair trade in ‘Unto This Last’ published in 1862.

“In all buying, consider first, what condition of existence you cause in the production of what you buy; secondly whether the sum you have paid is just to the producer and in due proportion, lodged in his hands.”

Given the present shenanigans in the PLP it would seem that today the minds of some Labour MP’s seem to be shaped by an older writer than Ruskin – evidenced from their detachment of political expediency from morality – one Niccoli Machiavelli.

For details of Traidcraft trips to Cuba see: Meet the People Tours at www.Traidcraft.co.uk