What is Fair Trade?

Fair Trade 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 marginalise 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.

Fair Trade 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 ensuring better prices for producers, but it often also includes longer-term and more meaningful trading relationships.

One Size Fits All?

How this is done varies widely - how people practice Fair Trade is largely determined by how they understand the problems it's meant to address.

For instance, TransFair Canada manages the Canadian side of an international system that sets standards defining what Fair Trade products are, and provides Canadians with a way to know whether those standards have been met. The intent is to both bring clarity about Fair Trade and instill confidence in the public that it is not about empty promises.

However, neither TransFair Canada nor the international system it represents invented Fair Trade, nor are its standards the only way it should be understood. Even companies who meet our standards and whose products carry our certification mark often approach Fair Trade differently, and it's up to you as an individual to decide which approach makes the most sense to you.

Ultimately, Fair Trade appeals to our sense of fairness and common decency, and applies those values to the marketplace. It allows us to make a positive difference in the world just by the products we choose to buy.

A much larger community

Beyond certification bodies like TransFair, producers, and the companies that sell their products, there is a much larger Fair Trade community. This community certainly includes all of these actors, but it also includes individual citizens, schools, academics, unions, activists, religious organizations, and more, all unified in their desire to make the world a better place and all bringing their own ideas and perspectives to the table.

To reflect this diversity, this website is meant to do two things. First, it's meant to explain what Fair Trade Certification is and what TransFair Canada does. Second, it's meant to provide a platform for people (including you) to have their voices heard and to participate in a broad conversation about Fair Trade and how we can make it better.