Fair trade treats

During Germany's annual Carnival parades on Monday, tons of sweets rained down from floats on crowds of costumed people lining the streets.

Given the central role sweets play in Carnival celebrations, an association called "Jecke Fairsuchung" decided to promote fair trade sweets at Carnival societies, schools and kindergartens in North-Rhine Westphalia, which it has been doing since 2006.

The association's aim is to replace 10 percent of the candy, chocolate and chewing gum distributed during Carnival with fair trade sweets. In Cologne alone, this would mean that of the 150 tons of sweets given away, 15 tons of it would be fair trade.

A foot in the door

"At the moment, we're at three to five tons, but we started with just below one ton," said Roland Mohlberg, Jecke Fairsuchung's spokesman.

The group's name is made up of the words people partying during Carnival (Jecke) and a play on the term fair trade and the German for temptation (Versuchung).
The association's connections extend beyond North-Rhine Westphalia to other states, including Rhineland-Palatine and Hesse, both of which have cities hosting pre-Lenten celebrations of their own.

"Carnival is a great way to get people interested in a sustainable lifestyle," Mohlberg said, adding that he found it especially important to be on good terms with cities' Carnival festival committees, which can provide ample networking opportunities for the fair trade advocacy group.

The Jecke Fairsuchung association helps organize local parades and information sessions at schools, and also provides educational resources about fair trade for teachers to use in geography and politics classes.

Supplement, but not a substitute

The fair trade sweets, however, come at a higher cost: one small bag of fair trade fruit chews costs around 35 euro cents ($0.46), which is about twice as much as the conventional fruit candies. The price difference is smaller for fair trade and conventional chocolate.

The higher costs discourage some revelers, Mohlberg said. Since the people tossing candy from the top of a float buy the sweets out of their own pocket, many value quantity over quality - especially since they know some of the sweets will never get picked up off the ground.

Most of the sesame bars, mango puree fruit gums and small chocolate bars are also organic and simply taste better, Mohlberg said, adding that the group's goal is for fair trade products to end up in shopping carts when Carnival is over.

Stable sales volume

"Over the last years, sales figures of the fair sweets have remained stable, but at a relatively low level," said Brigitte Frommeyer, spokesperson of Gepa, the Fair Trade Company.

Gepa is one of Jecke Fairsuchung's trade partners and around one ton of sweets is sold by Gepa annually. Almost half of it went to the city of Düsseldorf's utility company, which for years has been buying fair trade sweets for its Carnival parade floats.

Overall, Frommeyer said the Carnival season "does not considerably contribute to boosting the sales of our regular products."

That's something the Carnival group "Jan von Werth" hopes will change. The 130-member club based in Cologne has distributed some 300,000 packages of fair trade candies since 2008.

But even the group's president, Jörg Mangen, admitted there should be more fair trade candy flying through the air at Carnival.

"For us it's important to take the first steps in this direction," he said.

Author: Matilda Jordanova-Duda / sst
Editor: Anke Rasper