c. 2007 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Fair Trade sales are skyrocketing across the nation, with programs selling more coffee, handicrafts and chocolate from Third World countries than ever before.

“Fair trade gives people of faith the option of an ethical consumer choice,” said Kattie Sommerfeld, the Fair Trade projects coordinator at Lutheran World Relief, where handicraft sales have doubled over the past year. “It’s a holistic approach to helping development.”

Prices for Fair Trade products are set by the Fair Trade Labeling Organization, which comprises a number of national groups, traders and farmer representatives.

Fair Trade prices are based on the cost of production, a sustainable income for the farmers or producers, and “living wages” for workers. Agricultural products, for example, include a 5 percent per-pound premium that goes to a farming cooperative for investment in social projects and infrastructure improvements in the country of origin. Fair trade products also are grown in an environmentally safe manner and with humane labor conditions.

Many Christian and Jewish organizations obtain their Fair Trade products through Equal Exchange in Bridgewater, Mass., the nation’s oldest and largest for-profit Fair Trade company.

When the Equal Exchange Interfaith Program went national in 1997, 57 churches were involved. To date, more than 16,000 religious organizations have purchased Fair Trade products through the Interfaith Program. In 2006, the Interfaith Program brought in an estimated $6.6 million in revenue, up from $5.9 million in 2005.

For many consumers, buying Fair Trade is a way to express their religious faith. They pay a little more but have the satisfaction of knowing they are doing their small part to support workers in poor countries.

“Our faith calls us to be aware of social justice issues and to work for peace and justice in the world,” said Sally Lautmann, who has organized a Fair Trade handicrafts sale at St. Eugene Catholic Church in Fox Point, Wis., for the past five years.

“This is our little way, on the other side of the earth in a lot of cases, to acknowledge the fact that people deserve fair wages for a fair day’s work.”

Lautmann obtains Fair Trade products for the sale through Work of Human Hands, a joint program with Catholic Relief Services and SERVV International, one of the first Fair Trade programs.

Michael Sheridan, spokesman for Catholic Relief Services’ Fair Trade program, said the charity’s sales, which topped $1 million for the first time in 2005, had increased by approximately one-third in 2006. He expects sales will continue to improve as Catholic Relief Services diversifies its sources of Fair Trade coffee and promotes its Divine Chocolate program.

“Our hope is that Divine Chocolate will replace lots of conventionally traded chocolate that people already sell in fundraisers in religious schools across the country,” Sheridan said.

Fair Trade is not only about prices, Sheridan said, but about creating a different kind of relationship with workers in Ghana, Nicaragua, Madagascar, Mexico, Bolivia and other countries producing consumer goods for Americans.

“We talk about our coffee as `relationship coffee’ or our chocolate as `relationship chocolate,”’ Sheridan said. “It’s not built on anonymity.”

A number of private and public universities have joined the Fair Trade campaign as well. They include Wheaton College, a Christian liberal arts university outside Chicago, and the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., which began offering Fair Trade coffee in its dining halls and in many campus restaurants in 2004. Notre Dame also holds an annual Fair Trade handicrafts sale.

In the United States, Fair Trade imports are regulated by TransFair USA, a member of the Fair Trade Labeling Organization. During the first half of 2006, the organization certified nearly 80 percent more Fair Trade coffee than during the first half of 2005. Products such as cocoa, rice and sugar have also seen increases.

KRE/LFEND BOYLE

Editors: See related story, RNS-BENEFICIO-COFFEE, transmitted March 13, 2007.