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How gebana works
We commit every day to fairer trade. How does that work? What does gebana do and why do we need you?
For us at gebana, fairer trade means that family farmers earn a better income than they do today; that there are local jobs and the local economy works; that we protect the environment.
In the video below you can see how we want to achieve these goals with your help.
We are doubling our impact!
On the occasion of our double anniversary in 2023 - 50 years of banana women and 25 years of gebana - we promised all our customers that we would double our previous impact at the origin. But we don't want it to take another 25 years, we want to do it as quickly as possible.
Below you can find out specifically where we will double our impact.
We work with more family farmers
We currently work with 13,388 family farmers worldwide. Most of them live in Burkina Faso and Togo. These families benefit from purchase guarantees, pre-harvest financing, support during certifications and training, as well as premiums.
We want to double the number of family farmers as quickly as possible (starting point 2022) so that more people can make a living from their work in agriculture and smallholder farming structures are preserved.
We are doubling the area of organic farmland
The family farmers we work with around the world grow their fruit, nuts and vegetables on an area half the size of the canton of Thurgau or of the city-state of Berlin. They use organic production methods to produce plenty of delicious food while increasing biodiversity, improving soil and water quality as well as generating more income.
All the more reason to convert more acreage into organic farmland! Our target: 87'200 hectares, or, to put it more simply: an area covering the whole of Thurgau or all of Berlin!
We are increasing the premium amount for family farmers
In 2023, we paid out a total of 1.76 million euros in premiums to family farmers. This corresponds to just over 14 per cent of the Fairtrade premiums for the whole of Switzerland!
In addition to the Fairtrade premiums, our premiums also include solidarity contributions, for example for olive oil from Palestine. However, the largest part is the contribution from our gebana model: 10 per cent of the sales price of a growing number of products in our online shop goes back to the family farmers, in addition to the organic and Fairtrade purchase price.
We want to increase this amount to at least 3.2 million euros as quickly as possible, to improve the income of even more family farmers in the long term.
We create new jobs
Today, around 761 people throughout the world work for gebana, over 90 % of them in countries like Burkina Faso or Togo. These countries are among the poorest in the world.
Steady jobs provide people with a regular income, a pension and health insurance. This benefits not only employees but also their entire families. If we double the number of jobs in the next few years, it will have a positive impact on several thousands of people. An important tool for getting there will be our new mango and cashew processing factory in Burkina Faso.
Due to lower production in Burkina Faso, we employed fewer seasonal workers in 2023 than in the previous year. In addition, we sold our subsidiary gebana Brasil last year. Both of these factors led to a decline in the number of employees for the first time. You can read more about this in our annual report.
Illustrations: Jules Guerin