MORE MARKET CHANCES FOR BANANAS FROM FAIR TRADE - POSSIBILITIES AND LIMITS

THE VIEWPOINT OF A DANISH CONSUMER ORGANIZATION

Ilse Friis Madsen, Green Families

Dear audience – a story from Denmark:

I was 9 years old before I tatsted my first banana. During the war, and quite a few years after, when I was a child, you were not able to buy bananas in Denmark. But in my phantasy I had eaten lots of bananas, as I swept through the jungle with Tarzan – that was my elder brother – by my side.

To us the banana, the wonderful tropical fruit from the rainforest, was a symbol of freedom from work, affluence, harmony with nature.

A few years after the war the rest of the family went off to England for a holiday, leaving me, the little one, at home with my grandparents. My parents promised that they would bring back a banana for me, to fulfill one of my most sincere wishes. They managed to get hold of the prescious thing, but you may imagine it’s standard when it arrived in Denmark after a long transport in a family car. It certainly did not meet any of the standards, we hear about yesterday! -–nendless was my disappointment, when I swa the little black thing, - and it got even worse when I tasted it! – That was my first experience of the banana world!

My name is Ilse Friis Madsen, and I am a dentist by proffession, running a private in Rosklide, west of Copenhagen. I am very happy to be invited to take part in this Conference, as the fair trade complex of problems is of great interest to the political consumer, whom I represent here. My presence at this Conference is not due to any performance in the banana world, but to the fact that I am member of a fairly new consumer’s organization called the National Association of Green Families in Denmark. I am the vice president of the central commitee and the chairman of one of the local commitees, and I have worked with the association since 1994. The topic of my speech here will be to tell you about our organzation, how and when it came into being, how it is structured, what we are dealing with, - and to tell you about a campaign against genetically modified organisms to the probelms of the fair trade bananas.

Green Families is a continuation of a project that was carried out by the National Danish Consumers Association, in which we are represented by two members now. The project was an information campaign on environment, starting in 1986. 26 Danish families were chosen to keep a diary of their consumption in order to disclose the environmental advantages or barriers that turn up when you start to pay more attention to environment in your daily life. The experiment ran for 3 years and ended in ’92. It showed that environmental advantages could be obtained by information of the consumer, but the best effect was obtained where you could get the information to work in an interaction of the consumer, the trades and industries and the local governments.

Therefore in 1992 and thus inspired by the Rio Conference, a handful of idealistic people took the initiative of building a consumers’ organisation called National Association of Green Families in Denmark, this in order to promote action for sustainability in the consumer’s daily life. There is definately lots of barriers, when you want to adjust your lifestyle to what you know would be of benefit for environment. Your identity and self image for instance, plays a bigger role than you would think. These things we have to pay more attention to if we want to succeed.

The economic basis of the organization was formed by the Green Fund, which is created by the Danish Ministry of Environment. Our association is at present devided into 15 local associations, corresponding to the Danish counties, and it has altogether about 3000 memebers, and the number is steadily growing. What keep the association together is the central commitee, the members’ magazine ”Grøn Hverdag”, which comes out 4 times a year and - last but not least – a secretariat situated in Copenhagen. The local associations work independently and are responsible for their own budget, which is financed by memebership fees as well as by funding and sponsering.

Our pupose can be explained as follows:

It is:

to take part – locally as well as nationwide – in Agenda 21 as agreed to at the United Nations’ Conference in Rio in 1992, which encouraged local governments, producers and distributers, and consumers to cooperate for the benefit of our environment in the 21th century.

This we try to achieve by:

Working for sustainability by campaigns, exhibitions etc. both locally and nationwide.

Proposing to the politicians the consumers’ demands for a better legislation on environmental matters.

Proposing to producers and distributers demands for sustainable products and packing.

Informing about porducts and ways of behaviour to help obtaining a more sustainable way of life for the Danish consumers.

This definition of our purpose leaves room for a wide range of initiatives, which is reflected in the variety of activities going on in the organization. By arranging exhibitions, fairs and markets, where organic food and other sustainable products are the items, we get into dialogue with the consumers and try to signal that it does make a difference what the individual or the family buys or how we act in our daily life in respect to our natural ressources. The concept of fair trade is definately also an issue. Weserve fair trade coffee and tea, and at the same time explain about the concept. And since fair trade bananas were introduced to the Danish market last year we shall be able to offer them too, to make people aware of this alternative, of another way of acting positively towards sustainability and justice by choosing these bananas. But we need much more information in the shops about the concept.
On the national level we have carried out some campaigns. In 1994 we carried out a national subscription campaign for clean drinking water. We got 80.000 subscriptions which were handed over to the Prime Minister at the opening of our Parliament after the summer holiday. This helped to mark the debate and to support our politicians at negotiations at home as well as in the EEC.

In 1996 we worked for Denmark’s consent to the Nordic lable for susutainable non-food goods, The Swan. This was obtained in January last year.

In the local associations there is a great number of activities going on. We often cooperate with other organizations. We arrange excursions, lectures, debates and exhibitions to inform about how to live a more susutainable life, and we go into dialogue with the local politicams and shopkeepers for instance. Last year and the year before we were selling ecologically grown X-mas trees in Roskilde, where I come from. The ordinary production of X-mas trees usese a lot of pesticides and is thus comparable to the porduction of bananas. The first year we often heard the comment: ”Oh well, what is the use, you don’t eat your X-mas trees anyway”. Next year, due to lots of information in the meantime, there was much more understanding, and the sale was good.

Our members’ magazine – of which I brought a few for your to look at if you are interested – is a mixture of relevant articles and information to and between members – as well as to potemtial meembers. We use the magazine as a means of recruiting memebers, and it is of great value to the organization. Ist importance to the ecotrades is growing, which we can see by the increasing willingness to buy advertisments in the magazine.

In 1997 we went into cooperation with another 18 minor and major organizations to start a campaign against genetically manipulated oganisms (GMOs) in food production. This campaign is running until May this year. The organizations agreed upon making a subscription campaign as well as trying to get as much information possible in the media as to the dangers and the uncertainity that the present use of biotechnology imposes on us.

There are 3 items on the subscription list. The text is:

I urge the danish Parliament to introduce a legislation to protect man and environment against the use of biotechnology. I want:

1. Prohibition against production and use of genetically modified food.
2. Prohibition against letting out genetically modified organisms in environment.
3. Prohibition against patenting of animals and plants as well as their genes.

As you can see we do not go into the foeild of medicine, but we consider dangers and uncertainities by far too many for the present use of biotechnology. We know that it will speed up already ongoing decline in biodiversity and increase the growth of monopolistaion in the food sector. If development continues along the present lines we shall soon end up with 5-10 huge ”life industries” producing and controlling all seed corn, pesticides, food production and food distribution, and we shall see monoculture prevail in humans as well as in animals and plants. This is a frightening development which we hope – together with people from other countries – to be able to stop, well aware that the task is heavy and the time short.

It has taken some effort to make 19 very different organizations to work together and also to find enough collectors of subscriptions. People find it difficult to argue, considering the scientific and complex aspect of biotechnology, and many peolpe consider it an inevitable consequence of development. BUT, when we go out in the streets to collect subscriptions, it is not difficult to get them. A majority of the population feels a strong mistrust and aversion against the use of this technology. We feel it is against our democratic rights that these methodes are introduced in our food production. They have not come because people want them, but most likely for economic reasons of the industry. We hope that Green Families together with like-minded organizations and individuals all over the world can help to prevent this development.

Thank you for your attention.