Noticeboard
Fairtrade Mark Ireland
Fairtrade Mark bananas will be available on supermarket shelves from Monday 5 March.
Peter Gaynor, Coordinator of Fairtrade Mark Ireland, sends the following, hugely important, notice. Pass it on to everyone you know, and get cooking with Ross Lewis' baked bananas recipe from the Siucra booklet "Sweet & Wholesome"
Our lives in the Global Village get a chance to be a little more neighbourly with the imminent arrival of Fairtrade bananas in Ireland. These bananas will come from an independent plantation in Ghana and a Cooperative in Costa Rica. The current crises in the international banana economy seems set to continue, if not deepen. Huge over production of bananas, and changes in the European banana import regime are exerting an ever downward pressure on prices with dramatic consequences for small producers and workers on banana plantations. In Equador, which is leading the race to the bottom in terms of both standards and prices, a 40lb box of bananas can be bought for as little as US$1. The same box of bananas in Ireland might retail for about IEP40. Plantation workers in Equador earn US$3 a day.
Fairtrade is a direct way for us to get a better deal for small producers and support better working conditions within the banana industry. At a minimum we need to sell 4000 bags of bananas a week in order to keep them on the supermarket shelves. We need to do a lot more to be serious about it.
We need to buy them, and encourage as many people as we can to do the same. Please forward this information to as many people as you can.
Fairtrade Mark bananas will be available on supermarket shelves from Monday 5 March.
Fairtrade Mark bananas will be available through the following stores:
Dunnes Stores
Dublin: Ashleaf Centre; Cornelscourt; Rathmines; South Great Georges
Street; Stephens Green Centre.
Around the country: Cranmore Rd, Sligo; Douglas, Cork; Galway; Kilkenny;
Limerick; Navan; Portlaoise; Wexford.
Superquinn
Dublin: Ballinteer; Blackrock; Blanchardstown; Bray; Finglas; Knocklyon;
Lucan; Northside; Rathmines; Sundrive; Sutton; Swords; Walkinstown.
Around the country: Carlow; Clonmel; Dundalk; Kilkenny; Naas; Waterford.
email John and Sally | read other articles in this issue
text © John & Sally McKenna
illustrations © Ken
Buggy
