Fair Trade Sugars: 2 million ways to make a difference

On January 31, 2010, Wholesome Sweeteners hit a milestone: The company has officially donated more than $2 million in Fair Trade Certified social premiums to sugar cane farmers and beekeepers in the developing world.

Sugar cane field being cut by hand in Paraguay.

Social premiums go beyond the price paid for sugar and honey. They are funds sent directly and every quarter to the farmer cooperatives that sell to Wholesome. For example, a farming group in Malawi, one of the 20 poorest countries in the world, might sell sugar cane by the ton to a local mill for an agreed-upon price. Wholesome pays the mill for that sugar. Then the company goes a step further by direct-wiring a social premium — perhaps seven to nine cents per pound of sugar — to the farmers themselves.

“Farmers use the money for the benefit of the community — for projects that really impact people’s lives,” says Pauline McKee, vice president of marketing for Wholesome Sweeteners.

Wholesome is still the first and only Fair Trade sugar company in the United States. Since 2005, the company has been steadily building the market for Fair Trade Certified sweeteners, gearing its products toward “socially and environmentally concerned consumers,” says McKee. “Consumers’ increasing support of these products demonstrates their commitment to the larger cause.”

The “larger cause” is the concept of Fair Trade, which guarantees that farmers’ cooperatives are paid fairly and directly. Workers on a Fair Trade farm, for example, receive a fair market price for their produce and enjoy safe working conditions. Child labor is prohibited. And the structure of the system ensures that growers can compete with factory farms — while still practicing sustainable agriculture — and earn enough to buy their own land and send their kids to school.

“The Fair Trade system is also about the farmers’ being self-determining. A farmers’ cooperative is getting this money through their own work, and they’re making decisions together about how to benefit their own community,” says McKee.

Well dug in Malawi using Fair Trade premiums.

In Malawi, for example, farmers used social-premium funds to dig water wells, so that women no longer had to spend hours each day hauling water from a nearby village. In Paraguay, funds pre-financed trucks, allowing farmers to transport sugar cane to mills within 24 hours of cutting it.

Other farmers in Paraguay opted to put money toward creating a radio station, “because, of course, no one has cell phones,” explains McKee. “Now they can communicate and know what’s happening in their community by listening to the station.”

“The benefits of the Fair Trade Certified program have enormous impacts for our cooperative partners in Malawi, Mexico and Paraguay, and those benefits increase with every quarterly payment,” she adds. “Together, we really are making the world a sweeter place.”