The Fairtrade Foundation has begun negotiations with a number of UK supermarket chains about supplying them with fair trade bananas from the Dominican Republic.
The Foundation is the independent certification body responsible for the Fairtrade Mark, a label for consumer products that ‘guarantees a better deal for third world producers’.
If successful the deal – or deals – would be the first in the UK to involve fairtrade fresh produce.
Fairtrade Mark manager, Ron Hinsley, said the main difficulty would be persuading supermarkets slightly more expensive fairtrade fresh produce would not take too long to sell.
‘Many supermarkets accept fairtrade packaged goods, but with fresh produce they’re worried that if it’s not sold within three days, it’s dead,’ he said. Fairtrade bananas have been sold in Holland since 1996, he added.
The Foundation hopes the talks will come to fruition by the end of the year. Hinsley said fairtrade talks with banana producers in St Lucia, St Vincent and Dominica had recently collapsed due to ‘politicking’ within industry bodies representing small farmers.