Growers are at the very heart of our business. We work in partnership with them, buying directly from them and not from a Fairtrade register or through middlemen at an auction. Two of the nine board members of Cafédirect plc are growers, elected by their peers in Africa and Latin America to represent their interests. As such, they have both a voice and voting rights on all company decisions. Growers own 5% of the shares, however over 50% of the profits are reinvested into their businesses. Other companies who offer their producer partners greater shareholding, do not reinvest the same degree of profits, so this is just a different business model.

How these profits are reinvested is decided entirely by the growers via the Cafédirect Producers Foundation, so these are their profits to reinvest as most needed in their organisations. The Board of the Cafédirect Producers Foundation is 100% producer governed.

Cafédirect considers growers to be very much part of our business and in turn we are part of theirs. Growers are not simply suppliers to us and we do not operate like any other coffee, tea or cocoa company. The purpose of our business is to benefit growers, we are a growers organisation, working with growers for growers.

To the point: what precise percentage of the company is owned by farmers? How many votes do farmers have on Cafe Direct’s board of directors? Who owns the controlling shares? Probably not farmers, in which case, you are not the growers. You are misleading people that trust you.

While Nestlé has dropped its previous outspoken opposition to Fairtrade as a system in branding KitKat and earlier Partners’ Blend coffee, these are very much niche products. While some may argue they are Trojan Horses and will gradually transform the business model of companies such as Nestlé, the reality that Nestlé continues to be a major cause of the difficulties in the cocoa and coffee sectors cannot be ignored. Nor can the way it has used its Partners’ Blend coffee to try to divert criticism of the impact of its coffee trading and the way its Fairtrade KitKat is being used to a similar end. Indeed, a UK Government Minister for International Development used Fairtrade KitKat to bat away a question about Nestlé’s impact in developing countries at a recent UN press conference.
http://boycottnestle.blogspot.com/2009/12/nestle-kitkat-minister.html

This means that the impact of awarding the Fairtrade mark to Nestlé products has an impact beyond the Fairtrade movement itself. While undoubtedly the 6,000 farmers supplying cocoa for Fairtrade KitKat are benefiting, I can only wonder whether it will have a positive or negative impact on the millions outside the scheme and the long-running campaign to have Nestlé deliver on its promise to end child slavery in its cocoa supply chain.

Certainly from the point of view of the campaign to hold Nestlé to account over its baby food marketing it costs us time and money to respond to the ‘Nestlé must be alright now’ type of coverage and comments the award generates. While Nestlé has added the Fairtrade logo to KitKat in the UK, around the world it is rolling out its new marketing strategy of promoting infant formula with logos claiming it ‘protects’ babies – it does not, babies fed on it are more likely to become sick than breastfed babies and, in conditions of poverty, to die. Nestlé knows this, but is refusing to remove the logos. Thanks to the Nestlé boycott, I am confident we will eventually succeed, and to this end Fairtrade KitKat has been added to the Nestlé boycott list. You can see the ‘protect’ logo on a tin of formula from Malawi, one of the world’s poorest countries, at:
http://www.babymilkaction.org/CEM/cemjuly09.html