Speaking of (morning), Good morning!

Exciting and engaging things are in the works and barreling down the proverbial pipeline with Fair Trade Boston. As I write, we are working hard at updating the FTB website to better reflect and advertise the current ‘Fair Trade Town’ campaign and especially post all of the exciting opportunities and events that will be going on around Bean-FairTrade-town on World Fair Trade Day, May 8! So stay tuned, very soon, for all of that.

In the meantime, as promised, this headline caught my eye as I looked for reasons to procrastinate on the aforementioned website overhaul this morning:

Why Brazil’s Cotton Farmers Get Subsidies from the U.S. – a potent look at U.S. farm and food policy and its direct impact on worldwide trade justice.  (To complement and flesh out the topic a bit, NPR.org contributes this article from a few years ago on U.S./European subsidies and their impact on African cotton farmers.)

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Incidentally…

Interested in where to find fair trade cotton? Look no further than Boston’s locally-owned, operated (and great friend to all things Fair Trade Boston) AUTONOMIE PROJECT – Fair Trade Fashion and Footwear!

You’re welcome.

-Seth-

World Fair Trade Day Organizer | Fair Trade Boston

seth@fairtradeboston.org

A farmer from a cocoa cooperative farm in the Dominican Republic is sharing his story, and will be joined by staff from Equal Exchange, a leader in the fair trade movement and our partner in Fair Trade Boston. Chocolate from the cooperative in the DR will be served!

Contact organizer Liz Green to add the name of your organization: liz@fairtradeboston dot org.

Today, we highlight Freedom Stones. This great organization operates as a non-profit, providing job training and employment to victims of human trafficking in Thailand, Cambodia and Ghana. Employment allows these young men and women to stay in their communities and live a full life without fear of needed to enter prostitution or bonded slavery.

This year, consider giving a gift that not only expresses your affection for someone special in your own life, but also a concern for those who live on the other side of the globe.

It has just become a part of our culture. A discussion about Fair Trade at the Greater Boston Vineyard involves food. I like to eat, so I’m particularly partial to this development. At our meeting in October we made ice-cream sundaes. Pretty easy right? As my contribution, I stirred up sugar, cocoa, and vanilla — all Fair Trade Certified™, of course — for the chocolate sauce. The result was delicious, if I do say so myself. However, with my meager cooking skills, I was a bit apprehensive about our next culinary challenge. For this month’s meeting, we decided to bake cookies, cake, and other delectables to complement the Equal Exchange hot cocoa and tea that our featured speaker had offered to bring.

Three local leaders were featured as speakers at the meeting. Anna Utech, Interfaith Program director at Equal Exchange, gave a history of the Fair Trade movement from the 1940s to today. Ryan, executive director of Boston Faith & Justice Network, advocated for why the church should be involved in social justice. Liz Green, lead organizer for Fair Trade Boston, outlined the next steps in the campaign and how we might all individually get involved.

I was greatly impressed with the remarks that Anna gave. The level of engagement between her and the audience was electric. Many good questions led to greater understanding. She started with a discussion of how the interrelationship between actors in the north and the south helped to birth the Fair Trade movement.

Anna explained that in the global south, where colonialism was rampant in the past centuries, there has been a historic oppression of workers and local businesses. Powerful corporations based in countries in North America and South America have historically profited from this relationship, providing cheap goods to consumers in the global north. Note that as decades and centuries passed, this cycle of oppression contributed to the global north becoming richer (and more powerful) as the global south became poorer. This aggressive drive for increased wealth has also led to the environmental degradation and slavery that persists to this day. The graphic below simple depicts the North/South development divide as determined by the United Nations.

Anna pointed to how religious organizations have been directly part of the struggle to free the global south from unfair trade practices since the 1940s. The movement started in the south as local workers united to demand fair wages with northern advocates, often Catholic clergy, marching in solidarity. Soon, groups such as the Mennonite Central Committee and the Church of the Brethren created alternatives to charity by importing handicrafts from their foreign missions to sell in the United States and other rich countries. These two movements created the long-lasting retailers now known as Ten Thousand Villages and SERRV International. “Trade not Aid” became the rallying cry of the movement. In the 1970s attention began to shift from handicrafts to agricultural goods such as coffee. According to Anna Utech, church basements in Holland were one of the earliest places where fairly traded coffee was made available. One quarter of Equal Exchange’s current coffee sales are to faith organizations.

Why coffee? Anna Utech explains that coffee was seen as an agent of change because it is a critical source of income for people in many developing countries, continues to be heavily traded, and is largely grown by small-scale farmers.

Equal Exchange itself was started in 1986 by three guys who had come up with the idea while working in the warehouse of a natural foods company. In 1991, the company adopted the new European Fair Trade Certified™ standards, and, then in 1999 it adopted the standards set out by upstart TransFair USA. Equal Exchange continues to push the limits of what is possible for trade by sharing risk with its farmers, offering up to 60 percent of the purchase price before harvest.

After Anna’s talk, Ryan and Liz talked briefly about their respective responses to the issue and, then we opened up the meeting to further questions from the audience. Anna addressed some of the challenges to Fair Trade including the economy (for the first time Equal Exchange has been forced to reduce their contracts), co-ops vs. plantations (cooperatives support democracy and community-based development), big brands (impact of Starbucks, Dole, Nestle). A member of TransFair USA’s board – who showed up unexpectedly – was able to fill in the gaps.

Luckily no one was forced to eat the Swiss chocolate roll that I baked Saturday afternoon. Plenty of other goodies were available. Later in the day, as I reflected back on the meeting, I cut myself a slice to sample the cake. Epic failure. The remainder slid off the tray into the trash.

Jeff Purser has a real passion to find sustainable solutions to eliminate extreme poverty. He serves as a community organizer for Fair Trade Boston and lives near Central Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Seminar Series, Open to the public, no registration required.

When: 7 PM – 9 PM

Where:
MIT, Building 4, Room 270

29 million people are enslaved today. This 3 week discussion will unveil the facts about modern day slavery and sex trafficking around the globe and in our cities. We will high light NGOs making a stand against these injustices and take a look at how the international governing communities are responding. Fair Trade Boston and Equal Exchange representatives will assist in concluding the course by giving practical insight into how we can live as advocates for the oppressed. Come ready to be challenged.

Boston now boasts significantly greater access to fair trade certified products throughout each of the city’s many neighborhoods. In fact, we’ve recently documented that Boston has over DOUBLE the amount of businesses set by Fair Trade Towns! That’s thanks to business who continue to offer fair trade certified products and consumers (like you) who consistently purchase and advocate for fair trade certified products. Many of you have been key players in this process and I applaud you for that.

Over the next few moths Fair Trade Boston will focus on creating greater institutional use of fair trade certified products in Boston. We’re targeting businesses, churches, hospitals, schools and other non-profits who would like to make an ethical commitment. I’m pleased that there are many institutions already using fair trade certified products. However, the work is far from done.

Social change doesn’t happen without a lot hard work and solid leadership. That’s why I’m excited to report that Liz Green will be joining the Fair Trade Boston campaign as our lead fair trade organizer. Liz is a long-time Fair Trade Campaign member with a passion for fair and sustainable food, both locally and globally. Liz grew up in the Boston area and studied political science at Wheaton College in Illinois. After college Liz moved to Washington, DC to do public policy and advocacy with Sojourners. She came back to Boston in the fall of 2006 to organize congregations through the advocacy arm of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. In spring 2008 Liz began working in small-scale organic farming outside of Boston. She’ll be working with us until the ground thaws and it’s time to begin planting.

If you’d like to get involved in Boston’s grassroots fair trade movement I welcome you to contact Liz directly at Liz@fairtradeboston.org.

On January 21st, however, Stop and Shop will begin a trial run of Equal Exchange bananas. This trial run represents a large step for Stop and Shop, owned by the grocery chain Supervalu, which operates chains under various names across the United States. Fair Trade products are typically found in small quantities at larger, conventional grocers, which typically work with Dole, Chiquita and more established brands that can provide a quantity sufficient to supply hundreds of stores. Unfortunately, the human and environmental costs that must be paid to produce such a large quantity of bananas are numerous.

This trial run represents a larger paradigm shift occurring in the North American grocery economy – one that believers in the Fair Trade concept ought to support. There is a growing presence of Fair Trade, organic, and generally “ethically produced foods” at conventional grocery stores like Shaws, Stop and Shop and even Market Basket. These trends will continue if there is a consumer demand for them. A new market of Equal Exchange bananas at Stop and Shop means increased revenue for the company, and increased capability to form new relationships with small farmer co-ops abroad.

Second, and more important to me personally, is the appearance of Fair Trade products at the grocery stores where my neighbors shop. As a resident of Uphams Corner, a neighborhood of Dorchester, that is generally regarded as underprivileged, Fair Trade grocery options are all but unavailable locally. In order to buy a Fairly Traded product, I have to get in my car or make a long bus commute to another neighborhood. To my neighbors, most of whom feed extended families on food stamps, this concept is ludicrous. They do all of their grocery shopping as quickly as possible – and usually at Stop and Shop, because it’s close, the bus stops in front of the entrance, and it has everything one could need.

But, when a large company like Stop and Shop begins to explore carrying a Fair Trade product line, it reminds me that perhaps there is hope that my neighbors will be able to participate in the same just economy that I believe in, one in which they are often excluded from or simply don’t have the means to participate in. It also reminds me that perhaps there is even hope for grocery giants, whom we often tend to demonize in favor of smaller, local options, to change their direction.

This trial run must be supported by consumers in order to pave the way for a consistent supply of Equal Exchange bananas to be available in stores. I encourage all readers to check their local Stop and Shop for these bananas on or shortly after January 21st and grab a bunch! You can identify them by spotting a a red and blue Equal Exchange label. If you cannot find them in the store, ask a produce manager if they have been ordered. If they haven’t been, let the produce manager know that you are aware that other stores are participating in the trial run and that you would like to see the particular Stop and Shop you frequent carry this product. Stores listen to customer desires. A consumer demand opens up a larger market for Equal Exchange product, and greater profit from the enlarged market, which enables the growth of fair, social just partnerships around the world.

This is a step to be celebrated and supported by all of us who believe in Fair Trade, reminds us that, in the words of Equal Exchange, Together we can create stronger local communities, a more just food system and a healthier planet.

Ben Cressy is a program intern with the Boston Faith and Justice Network, where he enjoys working with college students to bring Fair Trade food options to their dining centers. He lives in Uphams Corner, Dorchester, and is pursuing a passion to enhance local food sustainability, security and nutrition in his community.