Interview: Steve Redgrave on his Fairtrade clothes range, charity and giving up the oars

from SmartPlanet.com

Sir Steve Redgrave may have won five consecutive Olympic gold medals for his rowing, but he's not stopping at that -- this week sees the launch of his Fairtrade men's clothing range, FiveG, at Debenhams. What was just meant to be a way of generating money for his retirement has turned into a deep affinity with Fairtrade. We talk to him about the price of cotton, Fairtrade premiums and find out why campaigning is harder than being a professional sportsman.

SmartPlanet: Why did you decide to use Fairtrade cotton in your clothing range?
Steve Redgrave: I got involved with a family business five or six years ago and we came up with a range of casual clothing as a business interest for me in my retirement. I'm very involved in charity -- I've got my own charitable trust and do a lot with Comic Relief and Sports Relief -- and one of my trips out to Zambia with Comic Relief made a real impact on me.

We had visited a huge farm, the biggest employer in the area, which had gone out of business because they couldn't sell their produce. The workers hadn't been earning very much, but at least they had a job. Now there was nothing at all. It wasn't the poverty itself but the magnitude of it that shocked me. The compounds had hundreds of mud huts with tin roofs, no space in between and one standing water pipe for every couple of hundred of these so-called properties. This made me think of the whole supply chain system and when I got back I thought: what I should be doing is not just a clothing range, but a Fairtrade clothing range.

When you're paying an extra couple of pennies for Fairtrade coffee, teas and things like that, which are relatively cheap, you do wonder whether it really makes a difference or if it's just something that makes us feel good. I wanted to see the cotton being produced, meet the farmers and find out how the Fairtrade premium was making a difference to them. So in November I visited the cotton farmers in Mali and found it absolutely fascinating. I saw that this small premium we pay to get Fairtrade makes a huge difference to their lives and to the whole structure of how they set themselves up. It's not charity and they're not asking for handouts. They just want a fair price for a very good product.

SP: How does the Fairtrade Foundation actually help the cotton producers?
SR: Over the last three decades, the cost of cotton has plummeted, but have we noticed that in the cotton garments that we buy? No. We expect farmers to produce cotton for less, year on year. What Fairtrade does is to give them a fixed price for cotton that's above the average going price and means the farmers can plan a bit more. I also found that where they used to be individual farmers looking after their little plot of land, they're now working more as a community.

The villages I saw mainly put their premiums into storage for the cotton, as the factories don't start ginning until there's a whole load of cotton and go into production whenever we need it, not when cotton's in season. One of the communities I visited also produces maize, millet and peanuts. Without adequate storage facilities, they had to sell all the produce at the local market at harvest time -- and when there's lots of it about, the prices plummet. But now they can keep it for when they need it for their own food or sell it at the market when the demand is there.

Schooling is also a priority. I spoke to one farmer and asked him: "In order, what's the most important to spend the premium on? Water, education and health?" And he said: "No, the most important thing is education. If you're educated, you'll find water." I found it very refreshing that he had that insight.

SP: It sounds like you feel there's more to Fairtrade than just the premium?
SR: Yes. We live in a very small world compared to when I was a kid. To go away on holiday to maybe Spain or somewhere like that was a big trip. Now people travel huge distances for both holiday and work, and communities have changed. These people who live tough lives in other parts of the world are very much part of our worldly responsibilities.

SP: Are your sporting fans surprised when they realise how involved you are in charitable and Fairtrade work?
SR: People who don't know me probably will be surprised and think 'why are you doing this?' People who do know me know that I'm very community-minded in all sorts of different ways. I'm originally from a building family and I've worked on a couple of projects over the last five years: helping design new towns in a way that'll bring back communities -- village greens, getting people to talk together and so on.

SP: You've raised huge amounts of money for charity, haven't you?
SR: Yes, we've raised over £5 million directly through my own charitable trust with the involvement of other charities and projects I've been involved in.

SP: Being a great sportsman and a campaigner both require lots of commitment. Do you find it easy or difficult to unite the two?
SR: I was involved in my sport for 25 years -- most sporting people, especially in the Olympic sports, tend to have very short careers. You do your sports, then you give it up or do it at a lower level or move on to other walks of life. Because I was at the top of my sport for such a long time, I was asked to come along to charity functions and that's how I got involved in Sport Relief and some of the other charities such as Sparks.

The more I got involved, the more I felt that when I retired I wanted to make a big impact in a short period of time. If I had just won, say one Olympic gold medal for instance, I might have retired and gone off and done other things -- probably business-wise. I would have enjoyed my golf, been invited to a few things and that would be it. But I wanted to make a big impact, which I why I decided to do what I do.

SP: It seems the years of commitment you put into rowing, you now put into campaigning and fundraising for charity.
SR: Relatively, it was easier doing my sport. It was hard commitment-wise, but it was very single-minded. I was doing one thing at the time and everything else in my life revolved around that. Now I'm involved in lots of different things -- obviously my charitable trust; my Fairtrade clothing range; and the list goes on and on. So I'm spread quite thinly in some ways.

SP: So are we more likely to see you on the campaign stool than in a boat in the near future?
SR: It's unlikely you're going to see me in a boat anymore. I did a veterans' race last summer and I will do that again this year, but otherwise I'll continue doing many different things, such as promoting Fairtrade. I'm also vice-president of Diabetes UK -- I'm a diabetic myself -- and health issues are extremely important to me. Obesity is becoming more and more apparent, we're doing less exercise and less physical activity than we've ever done before on average. We've got to make sure kids are fit and healthy and will have long lives. These are the kind of issues I'm going to be involved with in the near future.