At the Green Week Green Week in Berlin, German Development Minister Gerd Müller (CSU) called for more fairly traded food: he called on consumers and retailers to pay attention to producing better working conditions for cocoa, bananas and coffee. "Anyone who sells bananas under a euro kilo will accept child labor locally."
The trade should follow the discounter Lidl - the chain had completely switched to fair trade bananas in October. This must become the standard. To speculate on financial markets with food at the expense of the poor is disgraceful. This must be prohibited.
Müller and Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner (CDU) affirmed the Federal Government's commitment to better living conditions for cocoa farmers, especially in West Africa. Müller said: "Hunger wages, poverty, child labor and deforestation of the rainforests must finally be a thing of the past." Klöckner emphasized the goal of achieving 100 percent fair trade cocoa in the German market. Thanks in part to an initiative launched in 2011 with confectionery manufacturers and retailers, 55 percent have come from sustainable sources. The goal is to increase this share to 70 percent by 2020.
More than 80 percent of cocoa in Germany comes from Nigeria, Ghana and the Ivory Coast. There are two million children working on cocoa plantations there.