Inter-Varsity Press

Foreword (extract)

At a UCCF leaders’ conference in 1966, my wife Maggie attended a seminar on ‘The Christian in society’ led by Samuel Escobar. We still have the notes of that seminar. The concluding paragraph says, ‘We have to preach the Gospel. We have to live the Gospel. It is not an either/or, but both are imperative.’ That seminar was key for Maggie in putting social justice on her agenda, and its impact for both of us has been lifelong.

By the early seventies Maggie and I were being gently mocked by some friends as members of the ‘muck and muesli brigade’. They told us that we came to mind when The Good Life was on the television – with some justification because by then we actually did have chickens in our back garden!

Compared to the wealth of excellent books on evangelism there are few on how we can be faithful to God in the most mundane aspects of our everyday lives. This is one of the few. It is a book about what it means to live as a Christian at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In essence it is a book about holiness, about how people who have devoted themselves to God should live under Jesus Christ’s authority and guidance.

It has been written by someone who trusts Jesus as her personal Saviour and who longs that others should trust him as well, but who is also seeking to live in obedience to his Word. Taking Jesus’ authority over the life of the believer seriously, this book explores what the Bible has to say about how we shop, eat, invest, travel and so on. It is a book about offering our bodies, our earthly existence, as a sacrifice to God and refusing to be conformed to the pattern of this world in our daily living (Rom. 12:1–2). It challenges us to bring a whole range of different aspects of our everyday living under the authority of the Lord. I have no doubt that if we took it seriously, our neighbours would become much more willing to listen to our message.

The imaginative structure, passionate advocacy and comprehensive coverage of lifestyle issues in this volume belong to the author, but most of what she deals with is not new to evangelicals. For many of us whose spiritual formation took place in the late sixties and early seventies of the last century, there is here a fresh and vibrant reaffirmation of many things that we discovered then.

In 1980 the Lausanne Committee on World Evangelisation and the World Evangelical Fellowship (now called the World Evangelical Alliance), produced a statement entitled ‘An Evangelical Commitment to Simple Lifestyle’ (published in Third Way, June 1980). It still stands as a powerful support to the stance that is taken in this book. This commitment also emphasizes the inseparability of how we live from what we say.

The beauty of this book by Ruth Valerio is that it tells us how, consciously and practically, we can reject the values and standards of the world in favour of the values and standards of the kingdom of God. It is full of practical suggestions on how we can live our daily lives in a way that is more consistent with the will of God our Saviour. I am totally convinced that if an increasing number of us who call ourselves evangelical Christians took on board what is being advocated here in the way we live our lives, many more people would be asking us what they have to do to be saved. May God grant us such a Holy Spirit-induced revival of true Christianity. My prayer is that God will use this fresh and imaginative book to that end.

Dewi Hughes
Theological Advisor, Tearfund

Extract

B is for Bananas

My daughter loves bananas, and her grandma often tells her that one day she will end up looking like one. Bananas have become one of the basic foods that we all eat today: so basic that the banana is the world’s most popular fruit, worth £5 billion a year, and in the UK 95% of households buy them. We eat more bananas than we do apples; they are the most valuable food product in supermarkets, outsold only by petrol and lottery tickets.

Yet my parents’ generation almost never ate them. Do we ever stop to think what has taken place in order for bananas to be such an ordinary part of our lives, rather than an exotic fruit that we rarely see? As commonplace as they may seem, bananas are the perfect way to introduce us to the big, complex game that is global trade. This is the story of the Banana War. Traditionally, Britain and the rest of the European Union have bought their bananas from their former colonies, particularly the Windward Islands in the Caribbean. Britain invested in the original plantations, and Geest, the company that buys and sells most of the bananas, is a British company. The Lome´ Convention in 1975 formalized the EU’s commitment to continue to import bananas from the Windward Islands. This commitment was crucial, since the Windward Islands are almost totally reliant on their banana industry and are able to charge a better price for their bananas than producers elsewhere. Seventy per cent of the bananas involved in international trade, however, are controlled by the big three American companies: Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte. Not liking the EU protectionist policy on bananas, America complained to the World Trade Organization (WTO), which ruled in favour of the USA. When the EU refused to back down, the US struck back and imposed import tariffs, in the end worth $191.4 million, on EU exports (hitting companies such as Arran Aromatics in Scotland, which found 40% of its turnover affected). It might come as no surprise that the American complaint to the WTO came just days after Chiquita donated $500,000 to the Democratic Party, and that the tariffs were enforced by the Republican-controlled Congress after Chiquita donated $350,000 to them.

Today, the overwhelming majority of the bananas that we consume are produced in appalling circumstances. There are two main issues here. First, the plantation workers live in poverty. In Ecuador, for example, the workers are paid just $1 a day, and some independent producers get only 3p per pound (450 g), which does not even cover costs. On average, the producer gets only 5% of the price of a banana; as with many other commodities exported to the North, 90% of the price stays in the North and is never seen by the producer.

Secondly, vast quantities of chemicals are used to treat the bananas during their production. Plantations in Central America apply 30 kg of active ingredients per hectare per year; this is more than ten times the average for intensive farming in industrialized countries. In Costa Rica, threequarters of banana workers suffer from skin lesions and 20% of the male workers became sterile due to handling pesticides, while entire communities suffer from indiscriminate aerial crop-spraying.

The impact on the environment need hardly be stated, let alone the fact that massive deforestation has taken place to provide the land for the plantations. The effect that all these chemicals have on those of us who eat them is something we shall consider in a later chapter. It is interesting to note, however, the response of a banana worker on a Chiquita plantation in Guatemala, on being asked if he ever ate the bananas he produced: ‘Good Lord, no! . . . People in places like this don’t eat the fruit they cut. I guess we know better.’

Although we are focusing on bananas, it is no surprise to learn that many other foods are also produced and traded in ways that do great damage to the producers. Chocolate is made from cocoa, which is grown and harvested on many plantations that are worked on by modern-day slaves. In West Africa, forest land has been cleared to be planted with cocoa trees and is tended by boys and young men who come from poor neighbouring countries looking for work. They work in awful situations. Many are unable to escape and are brutally beaten if caught trying to do so. It is thought that 90% of the plantations in the Ivory Coast use slaves, and up to 40% of the chocolate that we eat may be contaminated with slavery.

The price of drinking coffee is going up, yet the price paid for raw coffee beans has fallen to its lowest level since the 1930s and only looks set to get worse. This has hit coffee producers hard and many are now living in extreme poverty. Nine-tenths of the price that we pay for instant coffee goes to the companies that ship, roast and sell the product and, in some cases, just one fiftieth reaches the producers. It may come as no surprise, therefore, that the large coffee-roasting houses such as Sara Lee and Nestle´ have gained massive profits. Nestle´, for example, saw a rise in profits of 20% in 2001.

This list could be continued to include other foodstuffs – such as tea, sugar and rice – and also goods such as clothes, electronic goods and children’s toys. It is a harsh reality that we are able to buy the things we do, at the price we enjoy, because those who are making or producing them are not being paid a proper wage by the large companies that own them.

But are there alternatives, and is there anything that we can do about it?

The answer is ‘yes’ to both questions. There are three routes open to us. The first is Fair trade. Fair trade (FT) schemes work directly with cooperatives, cutting out the middlemen. They guarantee a fixed minimum price, however low world prices may fall, and, if prices rise above this level, some schemes (such as Cafédirect) pay an extra 10% social premium. They often help beyond just making the payments, with business development programmes and other advice. FT schemes are incredibly beneficial to the producers. For example, despite the recent coffee crisis, those registered with the official FT scheme were able to escape its worse effects and still invest in essentials such as healthcare and education.

Many FT products are now readily available in our shops and are doing extremely well, showing a year-on-year average increase of 50%, with the range expanding constantly. Coffee, tea and chocolate can be bought in supermarkets, and FT bananas are now on the shelves of Asda, the Co-op, Tesco, Safeway, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose. Many city centres have FT shops and Traidcraft is one example of the FT mail-order possibilities.

FT succeeds when the whole supply chain can be controlled, and hence works best with foodstuffs and also with cotton clothing. FT is the ideal that must be striven for. The present reality, though, is that few companies can truthfully assert that they know how all their goods are produced, since a typical supply chain is vast. (Sainsbury’s, for example, estimates that it takes the produce of a million farms around the globe.)

With this in mind, the second alternative route available to us, where FT is not yet an option, is to push for ethical trade. Ethical trade is about ensuring that minimum international labour standards are met. These standards include freely chosen employment; freedom to form trade unions; safe and hygienic working conditions; no child labour; payment of living wages; no excessive working hours; minimum environmental damage and no discrimination. For this to happen, companies need to be prepared to aim for longer-term solutions, improving supply chains through incremental changes. Most of the goods we buy will not carry a FT label, but we can still play our part in encouraging companies to operate more ethically by becoming more educated and informed about the products we are purchasing and asking questions of the companies whenever we want to buy from them.

The third route is trade justice. One of the main ways a country can be lifted out of its poverty is through increasing its exports to the richer countries. The rules for international trade, however, are governed by the commercial and financial interests of those richer countries and thus are shaped to their own advantage. These rules are enforced primarily through three institutions: the WTO, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Trade justice is about seeing a major overhaul happen to the current system so that the rules work for poor people rather than against them. This reform of the institutions would include measures like making poverty eradication a key objective, ensuring a truly democratic and transparent process and monitoring the activities of transnational corporations as well as of governments. As citizens and consumers we can be using our voices to call for these changes to take place.

With so many avenues open to us, we can begin playing our part in changing, for the good, the lives of the people who grow or make the things we buy. We have already seen how Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan teaches us that we are to be neighbours to those whom others ignore, and this applies to those living next door and those on the other side of the world. Through taking the time and trouble to buy fairly traded products, and by getting involved in working for a fairer and more ethical trading system, we can take a step towards being that neighbour ourselves.

Action points

 Increase your awareness of the issues behind the products you buy. Take time to ask retailers where the product comes from and whether they have looked into the conditions of the producers. For more information on food and supermarkets, see ‘F is for Food’.

 Whenever you can, make sure that the things you buy carry the fair-trade logo. This will often mean shopping somewhere other than the supermarket and being prepared to pay a higher price. If you find this hard to swallow, tell yourself that you are paying the price you should be paying anyway and are stopping others getting ripped off.

 Consider setting up a Traidcraft stall at your place of work or worship. That way, you and others can gain access to a greater number of fairly traded goods than the supermarkets provide.

 Find out more about the Trade Justice Movement and consider how you might get involved.