Fair trade sales rise 12%.

More than 100,000 Palestinians rely on olive farming as the primary source of their income, but no one in Palestine considers olive farming as just a regular job

by S. C.

Sales of fair trade products rose 12% last year – outpacing the wider market – but at £800m still remain a fraction of the overall amount of money spent by consumers in the UK.

The Fairtrade Foundation said the rise in sales showed that consumers had remained "staunchly loyal" last year. Even so, conditions for producers in the developing countries that supply the fair trade products were "desperate", as for Paletinians olive growers.

Despite the capacity to produce a surplus of olive oil, Palestinian olive farmers have seen little reason to send their treasured oil abroad. Occupation makes exporting less than profitable- many farmers have lost their land and their trees and they lack access to Israeli controlled markets.

More than 100,000 Palestinians rely on olive farming as the primary source of their income, but no one in Palestine considers olive farming as just a regular job. There is a culture of olive farming that dates back hundreds of years, that links families to the land of their ancestors, and that serves as a source of Palestinian pride. Tayser Arabassi from the UK based ethical trading company Zaytoun says that while Fairtrade is improving the farmers lives the whole Fairtrade process- from the Palestinian tree to the European supermarket shelf- is about the power of perseverance.