Fair Trade movement and African farmers call for urgent action to put small-scale cotton farmers on the global agenda as EU is preparing its garment initiative

Cover cotton position paperOn 15 March 2016, the Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO) launched a position paper (alongside with a press release) at the Cotton Forum taking place in Paris, in cooperation with the Association of African Cotton Producers. In this new document, the Fair Trade movement calls on the European Union, G7 and West African governments to step up their policies in support of fairer and more sustainable textile supply chains, and to not forget about small cotton farmers.

As a follow-up to the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment manufacturing centre on 24 April 2013, much public attention has been recently placed on compensation to victims and the improvement of the building safety, working conditions and wages at the garment stage of textile supply chains. Unfortunately, little public attention has gone to the cotton farmers that “grow” our clothes.

 

In West and Central Africa, the 10 million cotton farmers face an unfair trading system and serious imbalances of power in cotton supply chains, a key obstacle to their livelihoods. Although state control in West Africa has reduced and farmers participate more in the governance of the cotton sector, the power of small farmers remains weak. Bottlenecks and gatekeepers between local actors and the market constitute a key obstacle to ensure a living income for farmers and living wage for their workers. At the same time, West Africa farmers are also negatively impacted by unfair trading distorting subsidies in various cotton-producing countries (e.g. USA, EU, China) that result in abnormally-low prices paid to West African cotton farmers.

EU garment initiativeThe FTAO’s position paper foresaw the European Union (EU) high-level conference on Responsible Management of the Supply chain in the Garment sector on 25 April 2016. The aim of this first EU garment initiative meeting was to listen to different actors and learn from other initiatives in member states (in Germany and the Netherlands). MEP Arne Lietz (S&D, DE) delivered one of the opening speeches in which he argued for the initiative covering the entire supply chain from producer to consumer mentioning the new Fairtrade Textile Standard as prove that this is possible. Additionally, he emphasized through the implementation of the new EU City for Fair and Ethical trade award (foreseen in the new EU Trade for all strategy), that the Commission should promote the exchange of good practices among local authorities to increase demand for textiles made with Fair Trade cotton. More transparency in the supply chain, as well as for binding due diligence rules on the clothes before they reach the EU-sector were further topics MEP Lietz spoke out for.

For the majority of speakers of the day a full coverage of the garment supply chain from producer to consumer was also self-evident. Commissioner Mimica and the college of Commissioners are now deciding on next steps to take.

Further steps in textile policies should be taken at G7 level, at the Summit of 26-27 May 2016 (Ise-Shima, Japan) which is expected to have sustainable supply chains (with a focus on textiles) on the agenda. The Summit should also report on progress in the implementation of the G7 “Action for Fair Production” agreed by the G7 Employment and Development Ministers on 13 October 2015.

If you would like to find out more about our work on textiles, get in touch with Peter Möhringer at moehringer@fairtrade-advocacy.org