Fair Food Roadshow (As the children are arriving make sure they each get a red and green voting card) Good morning boys and girls. My name is……………… Welcome to the Fair Food Roadshow. Today, we’re going to think about ‘being fair’ and ‘shopping’. You have to keep your brains awake and your ears listening – you have lots of choices to make and you are going to get to vote with your cards. First of all, let’s hear what God says about food and being fair: God gives you rain from heaven and crops at the right times; he gives you food and fills your hearts with happiness. Acts 14.17b (GNB) I, the Lord, have called you and given you power to see that justice is done on earth. Isaiah 42.6a (GNB) [God] appointed [you] ruler over everything [he] made; [he] placed [you] over all creation. Psalm 8.6 (GNB) i God gives us food and tells us to be just and fair to one another and take care of our world. I’ve brought my shopping with me. Let’s see what I’ve got in my basket. We’re going to think about where the shopping has come from. Here are some apples – any idea where they have come from? New Zealand. How far away do you think that is? 11,600 miles. Here it is on the map. And these apples have come by ship to the UK. These grapes are from Mexico - 5252 miles by plane. Pasta – from Italy – just over 1000 miles by lorry Carrots from South Africa – 6070 miles by plane. Carrots from France – 612 miles by lorry Bananas……Domincan Republic 4217 miles..ship Bananas…….Ghana 3178 miles…ship (Stick a plane or boat or lorry on a big map and tell the children how far away each product has come from.) Is it a problem to transport our food so far? Yes or no? – vote with your cards. (Get answers and talk very briefly about carbon emissions and global warming.) If we buy local food from near our homes, then transport is not such a problem and there is less pollution. Look at this basket of food. Here are some strawberries – they’ve not come so far – just from Perthshire. That’s 40 miles and they’ve come by lorry. Carrots from Scotland – 20 miles………….lorry Biscuits/potatoes/butter etc So we can look at the labels on food when we go shopping and if it comes from Scotland we know that there is less pollution from transport. It’s good to buy local, Scottish goods. But we can’t buy everything we want locally. This show is about choosing what we buy. It’s about trying to help people and about trying not to harm our environment. Let’s have a practise with the cards. Red means NO and green means YES. If you hold up the red card your answer is NO. If you hold up the green card the answer is YES. Let’s try it. Do you go shopping? Hold up one of your cards. Do you like going shopping? Do you know any shopkeepers? Do they like it when you go to their shop? Why? – You can’t answer this with your cards – put up your hand if you can tell me why shopkeepers like it when you buy things from them. So shopping helps us to get things we need and shopping helps the shopkeepers to make money, but where do the shopkeepers get their goods to sell? They buy them from farmers and people who make things. The other thing we are going to think about is ‘Being Fair’. Have any of you ever said ‘It’s not fair’? Sometimes people are not fair to us, or we are not fair to other people. How do we put ‘Shopping’ and ‘Being fair’ together? Well, we have a huge choice of things we can buy. If you want some biscuits you could buy these ones. Vote now with your cards. Or these ones. (vote) or these ones (vote)……………..(Keep holding up different packets, including a Fair Trade variety.) How do we choose? Maybe taste, or maybe price. But maybe we should also think about making our shopping ‘Fair’ – for the people who grow the food and make the goods we buy. Sometimes big supermarkets buy vegetables from farmers but don’t pay the farmer very much money because the supermarket wants to sell the vegetables very cheaply to get more people to come in and use their supermarket. The farmer finds it hard to make a living. And often the supermarket transports the vegetables long distances from the farm to supermarkets all over the UK. We know that can harm the environment. Lots of pollution comes out of all these lorries and they put a lot of carbon dioxide into the air which can increase global warming. Here is a letter from …………..whose Dad has a farm in…………………….. Read out letter So, let’s have another vote. I need three volunteers to be carrot farmers. (Get kids up to act this out) 1. You are a French farmer and you have grown these carrots. They have been bought by a UK Supermarket company and they have to be driven in a big lorry to England and up the M1 to supermarkets all over the country. This is the amount of carbon that is given out by the lorries. (Big amount) 2. You are an English farmer and you have grown these carrots. They have been bought by a UK Supermarket company and they have to be driven in a big lorry up the M1 to supermarkets all over the country. This is the amount of carbon that is given out by the lorries. (Medium amount) 3. You are a farmer from over there near [Ratho] (pick somewhere local to you) and you have grown these carrots. You take them to a farmers’ market in [Corstorphine], just over there, and you also sell them to the local shops in [Corstorphine]. This is the amount of carbon given out by your van. (Smaller amount) (Have bags of carrots and black bin bags or big signs to represent the carbon emissions) You in the audience are doing the shopping. Which carrots would you buy? Vote – French carrots; English carrots; Local carrots Now I’ll tell you something else about the carrots – the French ones cost 69p; the English ones cost 79p; the Scottish ones cost 89p Do you want to vote again? You can change your vote if you want – or keep it the same. Should we pay a bit more to help the local farmer? Should we pay a bit more to buy the carrots that didn’t harm the environment so much? (Vote again.) So we have choices to make about what we buy. Let’s try another product. Who likes bananas? Use your cards to tell me. (Bring on the 5ft. blow up banana.) Can you buy Scottish bananas? No. Use your cards!. So if you want bananas you have to get them from a warm country. They have to be transported thousands of miles. Should we still buy bananas? Vote – yes or no. Actually they come by boat and this give out less carbon per mile than aeroplanes and lorries. Does buying bananas help the farmers who grow them to make a living? Vote. Now I need 2 volunteers to be banana farmers. (Props – bunches of bananas) You are a farmer from the Dominican Republic. You work on a banana farm owned by a big company. The bananas are sold to a supermarket in the UK. You only earn very little each day and find it very difficult to make ends meet. You cannot afford to send your children to school as they also have to work on the farm to earn enough money to buy food for the family. You are a farmer from Ghana. You work on a banana farm. It is owned by everyone in your village and everyone works together for a share in the profit from the farm. A supermarket in the UK buys bananas from your farm and pays more money for the bananas you grow than it pays to the big farm. These bananas are Fair Traded and get a sticker on them to show shoppers that you get paid a fair wage. You can send your children to school and everyone on your farm can afford to buy enough food for their families. You in the audience are going shopping for bananas. Would you buy these ones? Vote. Or would you buy these ones? Vote. Let’s listen to this letter from someone whose family works for a Fair Trade banana farm … (Chose a letter from the examples at the end) So we can make choices about buying food that makes a huge difference to people in the developing world. We can help them to have a better life. Sometimes other things get accidentally transported along with the bananas – here’s Rosie the tarantula! (Show real tarantula or a fake spider) Here’s the last thing on our shopping list. We need to buy a bunch of flowers for Auntie Karen’s birthday. I need two volunteers to be flower farmers. (Props - Bunches of plastic flowers). You are a Dutch flower farmer. You send these flowers 415 miles to the UK to sell. You are a Kenyan flower farmer. You send these flowers 4365 miles to the UK to sell. Time for you to vote. Which flowers will you buy? These ones? These ones? Which flowers are grown and sold with the most amount of carbon given off? These ones? Or these ones? (Use the Carbon symbols to illustrate) Actually – the flowers from Kenya have been produced with less carbon emissions because it is very warm there and you don’t need a greenhouse to grow them in. In the Netherlands the flowers are grown in heated conditions which use a lot of fuel. Do you want to change your vote? Will we try the vote again? Which flowers will you buy? These ones? These ones? And the Kenyan flowers are fair traded. So when you are out shopping remember you can make choices which will help people to have better lives. Sometimes we may help our local farmers to get a good price for the things they grow. Sometimes we may be making sure that the environment is not damaged so much. Sometimes we may help people on the other side of the world to have enough to eat and be able to afford schools and hospitals. When you see this symbol on products in shops (show big Fair trade symbol) then you know that the people who grew or produced the item were paid a fair price for their work. That money can help them to have better lives. It can help them to be able to afford to take care of their own environment and grow more products. Look at all the things in this shopping bag – it’s full of Fair Trade items…………(show things.) We’re nearly finished now. Do you think you have behaved well? Vote. I have a present for people who have behaved well. Do you think you deserve this chocolate? Vote. Chocolate is made from cocoa which can be grown on big farms where people don’t earn much and very young children work very long hours and can’t go to school. But there is also Fair Trade chocolate where the cocoa workers are paid fairly and children don’t have to work but can go to school. Would you like some Fair Trade chocolate? Vote. I’ll give your teacher some worksheets you can do when you go back to school. You’ve done really well so you deserve this. Remember to think through your choices whenever you go shopping. Church and Society Council Church of Scotland 121 George Street, Edinburgh, EH2 4YN Phone: 0131 225 5722 www.churchofscotland.org.uk Charity Number: SC011353 Suggested props Green and red voting cards – A5 laminated cards with ‘yes’ on green and ‘no’ on red – one of each per child 2 shopping baskets – one with local produce and one with things transported further eg. Apples; strawberries; grapes; 3 x carrots; 2 x bananas; 3 types biscuits; 2 x flowers…….alter the examples in the script according to what is available when you shop. (Website to calculate distances: www.mapcrow.info The Co-op customer services gave information about how each product was transported) world map pictures of planes, ships and lorries blu tac French carrot; English carrot; Scottish carrot 3 symbols for carbon emissions (3 big black bin bags – fill with air; cut one to a medium size and one to a small size) 3 price tags big banana (available from the Fairtade Foundation: www.fairtrade.org.uk – also have posters and balloons) tarantula or toy spider non fair trade bananas; fair trade bananas 2 bunches of plastic flowers variety of fair trade goods fair trade symbol chocolate – 1 fair traded bar per child worksheets Letters which can be read out – choose the most suitable for your age range: Local: Dear , Thank you for writing and telling me all about your life. I live on a Scottish farm and help my family to look after the animals. I’m feeling a bit sad just now because we have had to sell all our cows. Dad said that we couldn’t afford to keep them because the price we get for milk is too low. He even thinks that soon we’ll have to get milk from other countries because lots of Scottish dairy farmers are going out of business. But we’re going to get some pigs and I will like helping with them. Banana farms: Dear , Thank you for your last letter. It was wonderful to hear that your town has just become a Fairtrade town. I’m sure you know just how important this is to all of us here in the Windward Isles. For as long as even my Grandmother can remember we have all been involved in growing bananas. All of my family are involved in growing, harvesting, selling and transporting bananas. When my dad was a boy there were real problems. We couldn’t sell our bananas because people in Central America were selling them at prices which didn’t even give us back what it cost us to grow them. This meant that he couldn’t finish going to school because there was no money to run the school. Then someone invented Fairtrade. My dad, my mum, my granddad and my grandma and all the other farmers had to work out just what it did cost to grow the bananas. The Fairtrade people said we would always get that back and we would get it for a long time. But even better there would be other money which would come to the village and which we could use for things for the village. This was great. My school has just got new desks. I’ve now got space to spread out my things. They make the classroom look so much better. Also we have got a new teacher so we don’t have to share the teacher with so many others. We can learn different things. We’ve even looked at maps which have Scotland on them. We talked about why you need our bananas and what happens to our bananas when they get to your country. I hope you will keep on telling all your friends how important Fairtrade is to us in the Windward Isles. Dear , I wanted to tell you about the wonderful things which have been happening at my mums hospital. The hospital was in an old building. It was hard to keep it clean. It wasn’t really big enough to deal with all the people who needed to go there. They have just had a new building added to the hospital. They can now treat more people and they can do it in nice rooms. My mum says it’s so much nicer to work in. She seems a lot less tired when she gets home at night now so she can spend more time helping me with my school work. As well as the new hospital building they have built a new road so that people who used to find it hard to get to the hospital can get their more easily. Both of these are due to the money which the island gets for its bananas. Now because of the way they are sold we get money which the island can use to develop our hospital and to build roads which people can use even when it’s wet. This system is called Fairtrade. People who grow bananas get what is costs them to grow the bananas but the island as a whole gets money which we can spend on things like the hospital. I don’t know if you eat our bananas but it would be good if you did and if you could tell your friends how important it is to us for you to eat Fairtrade bananas. Dear , As you know I’ve got 2 brothers and a sister. Well all of our family work in banana farming. My grandparents and parents run a farm together. My brother Rafique, he’s 17, has just begun working on the farm. He thought when he left school that that would be the end of lessons. He has just gone back to farming school to learn new things about growing bananas. Last week he was learning about how to use an electric thing to cut down the weeds which grow in the banana plantations. Before we had these people either had to cut them by hand which grandma says gave you a very sore back or you had to use chemicals. The clothing you had to wear to use these chemicals was hot. My dad was always cross on the days when he had had to spay the chemicals. However with this electric weed cutter; I think you call then strimmers, Rafique can cut down the weeds without getting a bad back and with out having to use chemicals. It’s only in the last two or three years that training of this type has been possible. Before that there was no time for people to study new ways. Everyone had to just work at growing the bananas and we were lucky if there was enough to buy food for the week. This all changed when we joined an agreement called Fairtrade. With this we promised to grow really good bananas and countries like your agreed to pay us what it cost to grow the bananas and also to give monies which could pay for things like the training which Rafique is getting and the tools he needs to do this on our farm. I hope that Fairtrade keeps on going. It really has made such a difference to us. ?? ?? ?? ?? 1