Cafe Kadjininy

Opening Hours - Teaching Weeks

Monday - Thursday 8am-8pm

Friday 8am-6pm

Weekends 11am-3pm

Opening Hours - Study Break

Monday - Friday 9am - 5pm

What is Fair Trade?

Fair Trade is an alternative way of trading to so-called "Free Trade". After the Australia and New Zealand Fair Trade Association's Fair Trade label launch in May 2004, it is now possible to buy certified Fair Trade tea, coffee and chocolate in Australia. You might be slightly confused - why is there "Fairtrade" and " Fair Trade"? Fairtrade is the actual label, the guarantee that his product has been produced in an ethical way. However, Fairtrade currently only deals with food and drink produce. Fair Trade on the other hand is the basic system and underlying ideals - a trading partnership based on respect and can pertain to any product, from T-shirts to sneakers, wood carvings to coffee. Fair trade is a sustainable way of helping people help themselves.

Fair Trade is another example of where Australia is lagging behind the rest of the world. In England, Germany, Canada and the US you can go to a university coffee shop and drink a cup of fairly traded tea or coffee. Yet in Australia, this is not possible. During 2005 Australian students from enviro collectives all over the country embarked on a campaign to shift their food outlets to fair trade products. Fair trade helps plantation workers and small - scale farmers improve their livelihoods and promotes sustainable farming, in a direct challenge to the cash crop monocultures pushed on farmers in poor countries by the demands of corporate agribusiness.

Why Fair Trade?

Systems of trading are motivated by increasing corporations' profit margins at the expense of all else - coffee production is a perfect example of how capitalism puts profits before people and the environment. Fair Trade offers an alternative based on consumer power. Fair Trade guarantees a better deal for Third World Producers by cutting out the middle person. Instead of farmers selling their individual crop to an agentwho has access to global markets, they band together to form farmers cooperatives. Fairtrade coffee comes directly from the farmer. Thus, unlike when you buy Nescafe, you are paying for the cost of the coffee production, plus a little extra to enable the farmer to send her or his children to school and put food on the table, as well as a premium for the community's economic, social or environmental development. Fair Trade empowers workers and secures sustainable livelihoods within an increasingly corporate - dominated agricultural production system.