What is Direct Equitable Fair Trade?
It's about making principles of fairness and decency mean something in the marketplace.
It seeks to change the terms of trade for the products we buy - to ensure the farmers and artisans behind those products get a better deal. Most often this is understood to mean better prices for producers, but it often means longer-term and more meaningful trading relationships as well.
For consumers and businesses, it's also about information.
It is a way for all of us to identify products that meet our values so we can make choices that have a positive impact on the world.
Direct Equitable Fair Trade is a practice where suppliers and producers of products, components, or ingredients, are paid fairly for their efforts and goods.
DEFT enables these producers in other countries to move out of poverty and improve their lives, and those of their families and children, and countrymen. It is, as it says, being fair to the people who supply the materials and ingredients we use here in our manufacturing, food service, and daily lives.
DEFT is really about making changes to conventional trade, which frequently fails to deliver on promises of sustainable livelihoods and opportunities for people in the poorest countries in the world. Poverty and hardship limit people’s choices while market forces tend to further marginalize and exclude them. This makes them vulnerable to exploitation, whether as farmers and artisans, or as hired workers within larger businesses. That two billion of our fellow citizens survive on less than $2 per day, despite working extremely hard, suggests that there is indeed a problem.
Long-Term Trade Relationships - fosters long-term trade partnerships at all levels within the production, processing and marketing chain that provide producers with stability and opportunities to develop marketing, production and quality skills, as well as access to new markets for their products.
Direct Trade - attempts to reduce the intermediaries between the primary producer and the consumer. This delivers more of the benefits of such trade to the producer and connects consumers more directly with the source of their food and other products, and with the people who produced them.
It's about making principles of fairness and decency mean something in the marketplace.
It seeks to change the terms of trade for the products we buy - to ensure the farmers and artisans behind those products get a better deal. Most often this is understood to mean better prices for producers, but it often means longer-term and more meaningful trading relationships as well.
For consumers and businesses, it's also about information.
It is a way for all of us to identify products that meet our values so we can make choices that have a positive impact on the world.
Direct Equitable Fair Trade is a practice where suppliers and producers of products, components, or ingredients, are paid fairly for their efforts and goods.
DEFT enables these producers in other countries to move out of poverty and improve their lives, and those of their families and children, and countrymen. It is, as it says, being fair to the people who supply the materials and ingredients we use here in our manufacturing, food service, and daily lives.
DEFT is really about making changes to conventional trade, which frequently fails to deliver on promises of sustainable livelihoods and opportunities for people in the poorest countries in the world. Poverty and hardship limit people’s choices while market forces tend to further marginalize and exclude them. This makes them vulnerable to exploitation, whether as farmers and artisans, or as hired workers within larger businesses. That two billion of our fellow citizens survive on less than $2 per day, despite working extremely hard, suggests that there is indeed a problem.
Long-Term Trade Relationships - fosters long-term trade partnerships at all levels within the production, processing and marketing chain that provide producers with stability and opportunities to develop marketing, production and quality skills, as well as access to new markets for their products.
Direct Trade - attempts to reduce the intermediaries between the primary producer and the consumer. This delivers more of the benefits of such trade to the producer and connects consumers more directly with the source of their food and other products, and with the people who produced them.