Why and How does FLO work with Fresh Fruit producers?

“Fairtrade is an initiative for small farmers and wage workers in the South who have been restrained in their economical and/or social development by the condition of trade (=“disadvantaged“). If fair access to markets under better conditions of trade can help to overcome the restraints of development, they can join Fairtrade.” (FLO Standards Preamble)

The characteristics of the fresh fruit sector being the perishability of the product sold in a market under high pressure, smallholders are more restraint by condition of trade than larger scale farmers for the following main reasons:
* Larger scale farmers are able to produce a greater volume as well as have proper quality supervision.
* Larger scale farmers are able to get easier market information than smallholders.
* Larger scale farmers are able to get the necessary certifications such as EurepGap required by many European supermarkets, easier than smallholders as it involves high costs and highly efficient organisation.
* Larger scale farmers react to the demand more quickly than smallholders. When demand increases it is usually very rapid. As markets do not want to wait too long before getting the product, it is usually easier and faster to locate, prepare and certify larger farms in order to get the volume.

Smallholders are more restrained by conditions of trade than large scales farmers. And at the same time Fairtrade smallholders have major weaknesses and hardly can satisfy the demanding market as described above.

Thus larger scale farmers are important as complementary relationship to smallholders. Larger scale farmers give smallholders strength on the market and allow Fairtrade Fresh Fruit to satisfy market demands in terms of quality’s and quantity’s consistency.

This is why FLO is working with both organized smallholders and larger farms in the fresh fruit sector. And at the same time it wishes to give preference to smallholders.