Maximising benefits for farmers

Tracking products along every stage of the supply chain can be difficult and costly. In Fairtrade, there are four products – cocoa, tea, sugar and fruit juices – where this is extremely difficult and can limit sales for farmers.  These products are routinely mixed or go through complex manufacturing processes in local mills, factories or at the point of shipping and due to high market concentration and centralised processing, where farmers are highly dependent of existing facilities. 

For example, it would very difficult and costly to shut down production lines in factories that operate 24/7 and  separate “small batches” are refused or would be billed at exorbitant costs. 

Fairtrade and many other certifiers operate a traceability programme type known as mass balance to ensure farmers and workers have maximum opportunities to sell their certified crops. Under mass balance, companies may mix Fairtrade and non-Fairtrade amounts of an ingredient during the manufacturing process as long as the actual volumes of sales on Fairtrade terms are tracked and audited through the supply chain.

This process ensures that Fairtrade farmers are not excluded from sales opportunities while consumers can be sure that the amount of ingredients in the final Fairtrade labelled product matches the amount sold by the farmers. Given the depth of poverty experienced by many small-scale farmers, and the urgency of their need for better terms of trade, this is a workable solution that has given thousands of farmers the opportunity to benefit from Fairtrade.

You can be confident that when you see the FAIRTRADE Mark on packaging, producers are getting the full benefit of Fairtrade sales.