First, our majority owner, AgroFair is 1/2 owned by the growers, including El Guabo. This means that in addition to getting fair trade pricing, they have a say in how we operate and a dividend from AgroFair profits.

Second, the AgroFair family has a nonprofit sister organization, AFAD, that has supported the development of El Guabo and other grower organizations.

Finally, Oké USA never pays paramilitary militias or other armed forces. And, we never ship weapons, only fair trade organic bananas!

Needless to say, your IP address, 196.40.21.60, is now going to be restricted from commenting here. Thanks for the laughs.

They helped us to become Fairtrade certified, they trained us to obtain our own organic certification, and now they are teching us to process and pack our own bananas. They had done a lot for Sullana and Saman. This city was dead before Dole came, now the quality of life for me, my family and my community had improved a lot.

Please do not talk bad things about a company if you do not know what they do for people like me in Peru.

Manuel Atoche
Saman – Sullana
Peru.

FLO was noticed by a local Union (Unions in Latin America are USELESS, believe me, USELESS, they are like parasits of our society), about this situation and FLO decertified us. Even when it haven´t been detemined if we are guilty or not by the autorities in Costa Rica, FLO decided by themselves that we are guilty.

Who they think they are? God???, please, somebody have to unveil the reality to consumers, Fairtrade is not FAIR anymore, it is a Private Club, as stated before by Jaramillo, with political and economical interests.

I applied for Fairtrade certification of my organic banana farm in Colombia and they just said no. They never gave me a good reason. But they certified other farms in Colombia related with a powerful family group in this country.

FLO is a big joke, they are fake. It could be a very nice initiative but they decided to go politic and they spoiled it.

FLO (Fairtrade Labeling Organization) from Germnay is a big fraud.
Did you know that a grower organization have to pay 2500 Euros to apply for certification? and there is not guaranty to get certified. If the organization do not pay, FLO will not inspect them, and still they can be not certified and FLO will keep the 2500 Euros.
Then, the growers sell the fruit to an Fairtrade certified exporter, who also will pay FLO no less than 2500 Euros.
The exporter ship the fruit to Europe or USA and to an certified importer who also paid no less than 2500 Euros for its certification plus a “tax” on their sales.
Then, the importers distribute the fairtrade fruit among certified retailers who also pais for its certification and the “tax” for the sales.

When the fruit is already at the retail store, the consumer, it means YOU, pay an extra price for the fairtrade banana…

It is supose that the whole extra price or premium will go to the certified growers in the developing countries but… have you heard about any project financed by Fairtrade?, did you find any information about the use of the premium you paid for the fairtrade product?

In the real world, a big percentage of the premium goes straight to Bonn in Germany to finance FLO and all its White Elephant(burocracy).

I at least prefer the iniciatives from the big companies like Dole because they have to be accountable and at least they are showing us faces and histories, and they are not saying that they are non profit, of course they are for profit, but they are letting us access information that nobody is sharing with us.

I also ask you and all nice persons from US to find the truth about FLO, they are not what they say.
Come to the tropics and experience the reality and build your opinion based on facts, not on what you read on a magazine or newspaper.

JRE.

This is not about transnationals or fairtrade certified companies, at the end been fairtrade certified means nothing. Fairtrade certifiation is manipulated by only one certification company FLO CERT based in Germany, they charge the producer, they charge the exporter, they charge the importer and the retailer, at the end one fairtrade banana produced a big bunch of money for FLO and only few cents go for the growers, so please stop saying that fairtrade is the answer, because it is far away from been the answer.