Rooibos Tea and Fair Trade

I've just read a journal article by Etienne Nel from the Rhodes Geography department on how two isolated rural communities near the West Coast have made money by exporting rooibos tea to Northern countries through the Fairtrade network. It's very exciting stuff, and I'm throwing around a few angles I can take on the story.

It doesn't make too much sense to do an article solely on the West Coast rooibos-growers, since, well, I'm here and they're over 1 000km away by road. I could ask Nel how much he knows about other Fairtrade agricultural projects, and do a general feature on Fairtrade agricultural projects in SA, or even do a "How fair is Fairtrade?" angle looking at the benefits of selling to Fairtrade organisations versus the administrative costs, extra paperwork and tight constraints it brings.I think I could sell a feature on this to Daily Dispatch.

It's the type of story M&G might love, but they're also likely to have heard it all before. So I'll see where this goes. - Ian