World leaders must act to end the "glaring inequality" in cotton trade by rethinking subsidies paid to farmers that undermine the livelihoods of cotton farmers in some of the world's poorest areas, the new global head of Fairtrade International said.
Fairtrade International has named cotton production among its top priorities, as farmers in the cotton-four countries - Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali - struggle to compete with subsidised supplies of the fibre from farmers within the European Union and the United States, its new Chief Executive Harriet Lamb told Reuters in an interview.
A 2010 report by the Germany-based ethical label group found that the US and EU spent $31.45 billion on cotton subsidies in previous the nine years, which suppressed global cotton prices, reduced demand for West African cotton and blocked producers' route out of poverty.
Farmers who sell to the Fairtrade market are paid a minimum price plus a premium to invest in social, environmental and economic development. Lamb, who took the helm at Fairtrade International in September, said the organisation was planning ways to overhaul the way it works with cotton growers and urged the US and Europe to do the same.
"I really hope that now the US (presidential) election is over, that the US can focus its attention on addressing that glaring inequality that has been highlighted by everybody from the World Bank to the International Monetary Fund to Oxfam - it's impossible to defend the situation of unfair trade in cotton and yet it goes on unaddressed," Lamb said.
"I would call upon both the British government and the EU in particular to really put addressing the inequalities in cotton trade higher up the agenda," she added. Along with cotton, Fairtrade has identified cocoa, coffee, sugar, bananas, tea and flowers as the core products it intends to focus on until the end of 2015, according to a new strategic framework. Top cocoa bean grower Ivory Coast, which endured a civil war last year, has been a particular area of success for Fairtrade, with the number of Ivorian farming groups working with the organisation rising from 15 to 50 in the past year, Lamb said.