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Following the excellent discussion about Fairtrade last week I had a big think about the relationship between helping the environment by buying food that is grown closer to home or supporting farmers in other countries.

I found the following excellent article on the BBC website:
www.bbc.co.uk/food/food_matters/foodmiles.shtml

Do we stop buying bananas to save the environment or do we support the fairtrade farmers and buy bananas? …

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I really like what Dole has done with their organic bananas.

Each one you buy has a sticker with a number on it – the number corresponds with the specific farm where that very banana came from. You can even view the farm on GoogleEarth!

You can then visit www.doleorganic.com type in the code and learn more about the farm and the people who work there.

N…

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I heard on this morning’s Today programme that Sainsbury is setting up a new fund to help farmers in developing countries become part of the Fairtrade system. “That’s good”, I thought.

Furthermore, producers who join the scheme will not be tied in to Sainsbury, but will be free to sell through other retailers should they choose to. “Fantastic”, think I.

And then I started to think about what a great PR move it is, and wondering how much of it is about generating that ‘not all supermarkets are evil’ thought in our little consumer minds, and how much of it is a genuine attempt to help some of the poorest communities in the world.

By the time I had made it to my desk to start this blog, my cynical and optimistic sides were fairly evenly balanced. It’s a great initiative, it’ll make a big difference if managed properly, and yes, it probably will help alleviate my guilt at shopping in a multinational (as long as I actually do go to Sainsbury, which requires driving past Tesco, Morrisons and ASDA).

But then I thought I’d add a link about it into this blogg so you can all read about it too… It took me a little while to find the story – even on the Sainsbury website, and it turns out that this is a partnership with the lovely people at Comic Relief.

Now I’m thinking, if it’s a big PR story, why isn’t it on the front page, and if it’s with Comic Relief as well, why wasn’t that mentioned on the radio? I know they only had a very limited amount of time to give the story, and that for every second of newsreel we see/hear there are about 20 on the cutting room floor, but maybe, just maybe, my cynicism is being boosted by a media with an agenda. I realise this probably sounds a bit obvious, but I’m really intrigued by the fact that what is a great story left me with mixed feelings, when what I feel now is “yes, it’s good PR, but really it’s about making the world a better place”. And who doesn’t want to be a part of th…

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