Our Impact

Catholic Relief Services has helped millions of smallholder farmers worldwide to recover from natural disasters and civil strife, rebuild their farming systems and productive assets, improve their diets, and enhance their ability to engage with markets more effectively. Our Pathway to Prosperity approach helps farmers build sustainable livelihoods through a phase-by-phase process to recover, build, and grow.

Photo by: Oscar Leiva/Silverlight for CRS. Rafael Cañas is a member of Cooperativa San Antonio Comasagua in El Salvador. He is a small coffee producer who benefits from the Blue Harvest Project led by Catholic Relief Services as part CRS’ Water Smart Agriculture initiative in Central America.

Learn more about fair trade and ethical purchasing

• Fair Prices

• Jesus lived in Nazareth as a carpenter’s son, working with Joseph to earn a living wage for his labor. This wage would have factored in the costs of the materials and allowed Jesus to cover the basic needs of his family: food, clothing, shelter. Today’s laborers, artisans and farmers, however, often do not receive payment that is just and fair. The guarantee of a fair price is particularly important for commodities like coffee, cocoa and bananas, which have been marked by persistent volatility. The prices for these products on conventional markets often rise and fall quickly. Fair Trade’s commitment to paying a fair price for these commodities means that small-scale farmers are guaranteed a fair wage, regardless of what is happening in the market. Plus, the fair prices paid for Fair Trade products not only increase family incomes but also allow communities to invest in infrastructure such as sanitation facilities and health clinics. The commitment of Fair Traders to pay producers a fair wage is the bedrock principle of Fair Trade.

• Safe Working Conditions

• Jesus and Joseph likely worked long and hard. But they took breaks when they needed them. They had access to clean water and air to restore their bodies throughout the day, unlike some of today’s workplaces that we now call sweatshops. Another criterion of Fair Trade, then, is healthy and safe working conditions.

• Cooperative Workplaces

• Joseph was a carpenter, so Jesus trained to be one, too, working with others in the family and in association with other carpenters. Today, Fair Trade supports cooperatives—democratically run organizations that promote the active participation of their members and equal opportunity for all. Fair Trade organizations purchase directly from cooperatives in developing countries and market their products to consumers.

• Credit and Technical Assistance

• Conventional trade does not naturally foster the development of small-scale producers overseas. Fair Trade helps to fill this critical gap through technical assistance and credit. Through training and consultation, Fair Trade organizations help producers gain the market knowledge they need to produce overseas handcrafts and food that appeal to consumer tastes and trends here in the United States. Perhaps more importantly, Fair Trade organizations also offer credit on fair terms. Most small-scale farmers and artisans overseas are forced to borrow at exorbitant rates from informal money lenders in their communities. When they are unable to repay the interest, they enter a vicious cycle of debt from which it is difficult to escape. Fair Trade provides them with affordable access to the credit they need to make their farm and craft cooperatives successful enterprises.

• Environmental Stewardship

• We cannot know precisely how Jesus used the raw materials essential to his carpentry, but we know that our church and other faiths have drawn from a clear mandate to treat the earth and its abundance with reverence. Fair Trade production practices mirror this respect for God’s creation. The more farmers and artisans take care of the environments in which they operate, the more those environments will take care of them. Fair Trade encourages respect for creation with technical assistance that helps farmers and artisans meet the expectations of environmentally conscious consumers.

• Long-Term Relationships

• As an independent carpenter, Jesus would probably have had many commercial relationships. It’s likely also that as long as His customers paid Him fairly and He created quality products, there would have been incentives for both parties to maintain a long term relationship. Fair Trade is built on a firm foundation of stable, long-term, mutually beneficial trading relations between cooperatives of artisans and farmers and the Fair Trade organizations that buy the things they create. The Fair Trade organizations don’t change suppliers from one year to the next in search of lower prices; they work in partnership with the same producers year after year after year—and are still able to make a healthy profit.