The multinational conglomerates have been paying extremely low prices for commodities grown in the Third World in recent times, and now that Marketsmeet.com is on the scene things could be about to change for the better. This is a trading platform that promises to bring some much-needed respect for the farmers in impoverished nations, and it will help to open up the market for wholesale buyers who have a conscience. Quite frankly, this development really couldn’t have come at a better time for all concerned.

 

The plight of producers of everything from cotton and coffee to wine and flowers has become increasingly desperate in recent years, and under the self-serving practices of the corporations things were only ever going to get worse. Despite protestations to the contrary, it’s fair to assume that the pursuit of profit was always the number one priority for the buyers, despite the implications it had on those doing the selling. Life as a tea growers in Vietnam, to use an example, has always been a harsh one, so it must have been hugely dispiriting to get to the end of the growing season only to receive a pittance from the buyer.

 

www.marketsmeet.com

 

In many ways, this whole process could be seen as a vicious circle that was unlikely to ever come to an end, but now that Marketsmeet.com is in existence there is a viable alternative that will help to redress a depressingly unfair balance. This will come as excellent news for the world’s farmers, of course, but it should also be noted that ethical consumers in Western countries will also welcome the idea. Since the advent of Fair Trade trading, many of us have been looking to give more for those who are worse off than ourselves.

 

One of the problems facing Third World farmers in the past was related to the way they were forced to do business. Many of the multinational corporations would only send one buyer to specific locations, and this often meant that the grower would only ever receive one price for all their hard work. If the price was a particularly low one – and it often was – then the farmer would either have to sell for a pittance or not sell at all. The whole system was really only ever likely to keep one side satisfied.

 

The popularity of Fair Trade trading products helped to open doors and change opinions

 

Many consumers in the West head to the local supermarkets at the weekend in order to buy their groceries, and some of them are determined to purchase one or more Fair Trade trading products during the process. They may look at wine from South Africa, bananas from Ecuador, chocolate from the Ivory Coast, coffee from Nicaragua or tea from Kenya. The possibilities are manifold, so shoppers with a conscience can always do that little bit more to help people in various locations around the world.

 

The doors to ethical shopping have now been ajar for some time, and with the introduction of Marketsmeet.com they can be prised open completely. Farmers in all parts of the world can now head online to make contact with socially aware buyers, people and organisations which are keen to ensure there is a sense of fair play from now on. For the grower, this couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time, because the situation in many nations has become somewhat desperate. Now at last there is hope where before there was nothing but a resigned acceptance to practices that would always keep them in poverty no matter how hard they worked.

 

The problem in the past was that there had always been ethical buyers who were happy to pay a little extra to ensure fair play, but they had very little opportunity to create and build a relationship with growers. This is a situation that will be cured by a combination of improved internet connections and the establishment of a fairer trading platform. Now at last the farmer in Burkina Faso can tell the world about the coffee that he has been growing, alerting socially aware buyers in no time at all.

 

It remains to be seen how much of an uptake there will be during the first few months in the life of this highly impressive trading platform, but it’s safe to assume that more and more farmers will see the benefits that others are receiving and will want to get involved as well. It won’t spell the end of the multinationals and their involvement in commodity buying, of course, but it will perhaps lead to them having to rethink their practices from now on. It could be that the world is about to change for the better, and it’s all thanks to the principles that hold Marketsmeet.com together.

 

 

There was a time when Africa was seen by the West as little more than a manufacturing base and agricultural source for commodities that were plentiful and cheap. The world’s multinational corporations, as always hell-bent on driving down the price of items, were able to scour the continent for bargains, and when there were occasions when they felt they were paying too much, they simply made sure artificial conditions were introduced so that they could keep buying as much as possible for as little as possible.

 

For the producers in Africa, in particular those who were running farms, the margins became increasingly tight, and in some cases they almost disappeared completely. When seen now through the eyes of the more progressive 21^st century, the whole scenario was an unpleasant example of the haves effectively bullying the have-nots into abject submission. The rich got richer, while the poor got obliterated. It was a situation that surely had to change, and predictably it had to start in the West. There was nobody in Africa at the time who had the power to change things at all, of course.

 

www.marketsmeet.com

 

The development and introduction of Marketsmeet.com has transformed the way that growers of all kinds of crops in Africa and beyond can make contact with potential buyers. There was a time when the farmers, most of whom were operating small-scale independent smallholdings that may or may not have been loosely tied to local cooperative groups, would only ever see one buyer a year, and that buyer had ties to the large multinationals whose mandate was to simply offer the lowest possible price they could get away with. It was a very unfair scenario that hopefully looks like it might be starting to disappear.

 

Whether the grower was producing cocoa in the Ivory Coast, coffee in Tanzania or tea in Kenya, the chances of receiving a fair price were remote. It seemed the buyers held all the aces in a game of poker that in which only one player could ever win. A fairer trading platform was needed, and that’s when Marketsmeet.com came to the table. Now, the farmer can make direct online contact with buyers in all parts of the world from Adelaide to Zagreb, and can reach out especially to people who are willing to make a far more attractive offer.

 

Can Marketsmeet.com meet the challenge of a new Africa?

 

The desire in the West to help those who are worse off began with the introduction and development of Fair Trade trading products, items which are now a familiar sight in supermarkets all across the developed world. The opportunity to buy items such as coffee, wine, chocolate and cotton in a fairer way was not only a chance to give something back, it was also an attempt to give due respect and a sense of dignified justice to the growers and their communities.

 

But however wonderful Fair Trade trading can be, it still wouldn’t eliminate the overall influence of the conglomerates which had been causing the problems in the first place. Something more powerful was needed to upset that particular apple cart, and Marketsmeet.com looks to be the answer. It provides a wonderful opportunity for Person A to talk directly to Person B, and in the process to bypass Corporation C altogether. The end result will be fairer prices for the farmer and, it is to be hoped, some much-needed introspective reflection on the part of the multinationals that will lead to a change in the way they do business.

 

Whether this impetus is enough to make the conglomerates change the habits of a lifetime remains to be seen, but in some ways it may not matter. Now that growers can reach out to other buyers, ones which are keen to offer a fairer price for their products, the role of the multinational in African commerce might not be anywhere near as influential as it once was. There are many observers who are desperately wanting this development to be pivotal in the way we do business around the world from now on.

 

The desire on the part of the West to do something about the imbalance that has continued to grow over the years is a strong one, and with Marketsmeet.com it looks to have found its most effective ally yet. The reason this new development has such a good chance of succeeding is the strong reach of the internet in Africa and in many other poorer regions. Even farmers in extremely remote areas of the continent now have access to the web, and they can be using this fairer trading platform to tell the world about the crops they are just about to harvest.

 

A more equal trading platform is now the way forward for the agricultural sector in poorer regions

 

Internet usage in Africa has grown dramatically in recent years, and it continues to give Africans a stronger voice in the world. Statistics show that nearly 10% of all the world’s web users are based in Africa now, a staggering figure in terms of the economic power of the continent. In 2015, there were more than 330 million people in Africa using the web, and these figures are still rising. The region now has a voice at last, and it is determined to use it in the commercial sector.

 

In the past decade, as access to the web has grown dramatically, Africans have become increasingly used to the idea of using the web to communicate with each other and with the world. Social media platforms are extremely popular with both social and commercial users, so using the web to communicate with buyers is not a difficult concept for the continent’s growers. In many ways, you could see the development of the web as the final hurdle in giving the region a voice that has been many centuries in the making.

 

www.marketsmeet.com

 

The number of social media users in Africa is growing all the time. There are around 125 million Facebook users here, for example, with 15 million in Nigeria and 13 million in South Africa. As well as chatting with others and sharing their observations about daily life, a number of them use the platform to buy and sell goods and services. The whole concept of farmers using the internet to reach out to buyers is not such an outlandish one at all, in fact it can perhaps be seen as an extension of what many of them are already doing.

 

It goes without saying that the development of Marketsmeet.com is unlikely to be an overnight success story, because it will take time to establish itself in the coming months and years. However, the early signs are that it will restore a sense of pride to the farmers, and this could be enough to turn it into the go-to platform for communities all across the region. An opportunity to avoid the demoralising practices of the once-powerful corporations surely has to be taken seriously from now on. This is a trading platform that is capable of turning the world we live in into a far more equal community.

 

So how will Marketsmeet.com help a farmer to survive?

 

The thought process that went into the development of Marketsmeet.com was a simple one, and it has to be said it was also a noble one. The farmers of the Third World were getting a raw deal from the powerful corporations, so what can we do about it? Well, the impetus behind the Fair Trade trading initiatives helped the world to realise that consumers in the West genuinely wanted to do something about the plight of the impoverished nations, so can we take that impetus on to a higher stage?

 

There was no possibility of dismantling the capitalist ideals that powered the multinationals, and they were too entrenched in the continent for anyone to simply make them leave the market altogether. Therefore, the best option, perhaps the only viable one of all, was to find a trading platform that simply went around them. By circumventing the all-powerful economic giants, it would then be possible for the growers to make contact with smaller buying organisations which were keen to offer fairer prices right from the start. In many ways, this simple development has now changed the way business is done, and it could be a forever thing.

 

The concept that drove the development of Marketsmeet.com could only be achieved by the use of the worldwide web, so even if this was a germ of an idea in the past, it may well have failed because of the lack of internet coverage. Now that far-reaching Wi-Fi is available, the game-changers have managed to change the game. The principles of Fair Trade trading, noble and laudable as they are, can now be applied to the wholesale levels as well as the retail ones, and in the end we all become winners of the game.

 

While the trading platform that evolved into Marketsmeet.com has become the key to unlock the door of fairer trading, it’s the influence of the internet that has provided the handle to that door. Africa has embraced the web with gusto in recent years, and its influence will continue to transform a whole continent. While we tend to see the TV as the easiest way to reach out to consumers in the West, it’s a different matter in some of the more remote parts of Africa. In some places, communities come together to watch one television, for example, but many people in the audience will be owners of cell-phones.

 

This trading platform has been a godsend for buyers with a conscience

 

There have been wholesale buyers in the West who for many years have wanted to work in a more ethical manner, and who have wanted to offer growers a price that was fairer than before. The problem for many of them was simply a matter of access; the growers had the products they wanted, they had the money to be able to pay a little more, but they simply couldn’t get a chance to communicate with the farmer on any meaningful level.

 

Thanks to Marketsmeet.com, buyers with a conscience will be able to open up an effective, mutually beneficial means of communication that could potentially last for many years. Nobody has to dance to the tune played by the multinationals anymore, and the world will become a better place for it. In many ways, the more ethically minded buyers were squeezed dry by the corporations as much as the farmers, but now we as a global community have an excellent chance to make these outcomes a thing of the past

 

The benefits brought by Fair Trade trading and the development of Marketsmeet.com have to be seen in have to be seen in wider terms now. The immediate and obvious plus point of a fairer price for the grower is all too obvious, of course, but there are long term advantages which also need to be taken into consideration. Chief among them will be the opportunity for the grower to invest in the future of the business, a factor which perhaps had become less and less possible during the bad old days of low prices and razor-thin margins.

 

If a coffee grower in Tanzania, a tea farmer in Kenya or a cocoa producer in the Ivory Coast receives a fair year’s price for a fair year’s work, there is a chance to make the farm more efficient. There is also an opportunity to make working practices safer, to help the community find cleaner water supplies and to encourage the development of a better healthcare infrastructure. The days of exploiting the farmers in Africa, and those in Asia and Central and South America, are fast disappearing now, and if everything goes according to plan we may yet find that we live in a world that promotes justice and fair play for everyone.