Impacts of increasing consumer choice on LEDCs

Good and Bad impacts

Positive multiplier effect• Kenya 135,000 employed growing flowers for UK market

• World’s 3rd biggest flower grower – mainly red roses!

• second biggest export earner for Kenya

• 110,000 tonnes of flowers exported mainly to Europe

Fair Trade – better prices for Primary Producers

• consumer demand for Fair Trade Products. Brecon a Fair trade town since 2008

• 60% extra of price goes to the producer

• for £1 worth of bananas this is 3p up to 4.5p!

• producers can improve wages for workers and can afford to send their children to school

Companies like Primark stung by bad publicity now keen to make sure workers in LEDC supplier factories have decent working conditions and wages.

Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh 2013.

Don’t buy £2 T shirts – exploits workers abroad.

Ethical Consumers – fashion trade

36,000 identified cases of child labour in India in 16 years.

government statistics point to around 17 million child labourers in India

Anyone employing a child under 14 could get a 4 year jail term

Children missing out on education

Abused and exploited – paid a pittance

Child Labour

Rana Plaza factory Bangladesh – over 1000 deaths 2013

4 deadly fire incidents in last 12 months too

Factory deaths

Garment Industry in Bangladesh:

It already employs 4m, mostly women, in a country with 31m households.

It has 5,000 factories, compared with 2,500 in Indonesia and 2,000 in Vietnam. Its labour costs less than any of its Asian rivals’

But profitability has slumped. In the past five years the price paid for a garment has fallen 12%

LOW WAGES – race to the bottom!

Ethical consumers want to reduce their carbon footprint …

… But how would this affect farm labourer’s wages in LEDCs – like Kenyan flower pickers?

Food Mile Campaign – LEDCs?