Friday 14 August 2009

Fairtrade versus British

I have been buying a lot of sugar lately for all this jam and I have come across a dilemma of sorts.

Tesco (definitely) and Sainsbury's (I think) sell British Sugar - made less than 30 miles from here, grown in the local fields and supporting local farmers. When I sent the FH into a Co-op the other day, as he was in the other town where there is only a Co-op, he did buy the sugar I asked for, but I was dismayed to see that it was cane sugar and had been carted literally half way around the world.

Yes, it was Fairtrade sugar, but still.... I do support the Co-op in lots of ways and I think that it is a good, ethical supermarket - and I totally support Fairtrade chocolate, coffee and bananas, for example, things we don't grow here. But why can't they stock British food if there is a British version???

The children and I were only talking yesterday about why I love to grow dwarf beans and why I absolutely refuse to buy green beans from Kenya and sweetcorn from Senegal. The sugar saga fits right into that conversation - buy British, please!

3 comments:

Toria said...

I would think that the British sugar company pays its workers a fair wage & has reasonable conditions. I can see the point of buying fairtrade products vs buying products produced with slave labour & appalling conditions, but that isn't the case here obviously.

Greentwinsmummy said...

I find this,at the supermarket I now pretty much go for the British option over fairtrade or organic.
Sugar baffles me,I mean what is all the difference between light soft brown & demerara,between unrefined & caster sugar. I am sure I buy more sorts than I need too :oS

Its nice to see the jam lining up on the shelves isnt it :o) I gave my storeroom another good rotate round the other day,the empty boxes are getting filled & placed in the freezer & then jars of jam replace the gaps on the shelves :o)
GTM x x

Morgan said...

I really only buy caster sugar most of the time, as we have no need for granulated in hot drinks and I only use caster in baking. I do buy brown for the Christmas fruit cake but that is about it! Anything else which calls for fancy sugars usually has to make do with caster, and I don't get many complaints round here (they wouldn't dare!!).

M
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