Buying Fairtrade Paddy from T2 farmers – happy faces all around!

Today we are buying Hom Mali Paddy from T2 farmers. They are selling to us for the first time today.
T2 means Transition year two, so these farmers have registered with the FTS Farmers Network more than two years ago, in some cases more than three years ago.
They have been following the organic rules for at least two years, they have visited trainings, have received numerous visits from Internal Inspectors and from board members.
They have visited FTS Organic & Fairtrade Farmers in their village and seen how they produce compost, how they manage their fields without stubble burning.
They have made first experiences with composting and managing their fields without NPK fertilizer and other inputs.
They have laid awake at night asking themself and discussing it the next morning withe the family: “Have we made a good decision, farming without chemical fertilizer and going organic?
As they are here, finally selling to us one year earlier than anticipated. They receive a fair, well above market price and are happy,
They do not yet know their way around the mill and the sequence of steps:
First go through their farming records with Bell, our head of the Internal control team
– always under the watchful eyes of a member of the board of the Farmers Network to ensure fair practice for all sides-,
then representative sampling, witnessing the testing (wow, they really take a retain sample from my paddy),
finally unloading at the mill, which goes a little slower then at other mills as they can not simply dump and go but have to wait for our team to unload one after the other while our team packs the paddy into bigbags, documenting each farmers delivery.
We are happy with our farmers and today we see smiling faces all around.
We are able to buy Second Year transition rice only if we have firm contracts with buyers for conventional Fairtrade rice. The buyer thus does receive not only the Premium Hom Mali Rice Quality from Amant charoen, but also rice that has been grown on fields with at least two years of organic practice. Dear Buyer, you do good for our farmers, come back next year!