On a hot Sunday afternoon in August, we decided to check out the farmers market in Keene, NY. It’s the largest farmers market in the immediate area, and everyone said that we should definitely hit that one. As we wandered through the tents, we came across a fellow selling Adirondack Country Gourmet Coffee. He had [...]
Jan 012012
First, we want to thank everyone who’s read or Fair Trade Family blog over the past year. It started last spring as we were moving to a new town and getting ready to try a lot of new things. In the fall, Caspar had a chance to go to the Fair Trade Towns and Universities gathering in Philadelphia. But since then a lot has happened in the Fair Trade world and with us, too.
What we’ve found is that Fair Trade is so tied in with so many other issues we’re concerned about and involved in that for a while it just seemed overwhelming.
And then, this fall there is what we’re calling “the great divorce” that was first announced at the Fair Trade Towns convention. Fair Trade USA decided to go it’s own separate way from Fairtrade International. And so began a lot of soul searching about where we fit into the fair trade movement.
At the beginning of 2012 we’re happy to say we’re still fair trade supporters. But much less naive ones.
So, we’ve decided to combine our Fair Trade Family blog into another one of Caspar’s blogs where we can share our thoughts and experiences about fair trade along with the many other social issues that we’re also passionate about.
We’ll leave our coffee reviews and other observations here, so you won’t have to re-bookmark anything you’ve already seen and liked on our site.
But from today on, you can find our new articles at iCaspar.net
Again, please accept our deepest gratitude for the time you’ve spent with us at here, along with our warm wishes for you and yours in the new year, and our invitation to follow our continuing story at iCaspar.net
Caspar, Brooke, and Silas
The Fair Trade Family
The first night of the Fair Trade Towns and Universities conference was a tour de force of speakers. A whose-who of big names from the fair trade movement. We heard from:
- Judy Wicks, Co-founder of the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia and founder of the White Dog Cafe
- Ben Cohen, of Ben and Jerry’s
- Chris O’Brien, Director of Sustainability at American University
- Renee Bowers and Christ Solt, of Ten Thousand Villages
- Amanda Kloer, Editor of Human Trafficking at change.org
- Rick Peyser, Director of Social Advocacy at Green Mountain Coffee
- Natalia Choi, Student leader at the Emma Willard School, the 1st Fair Trade High School in the US
- Mary Jo Cook, VP of Business Development and Marketing at Fair Trade USA, and
- Jeffry Cadorette, a community leader in Media, PA, the first Fair Trade Town in the US
In all, it was a huge night, as you can imagine, with so many different perspectives and stories about how these Fair Trade Leaders got started in the Fair Trade movement. We heard stories from Colombia, Haiti, Cambodia, and India. And we heard from the American business leaders’ end of the Fair Trade deal what it means to make the decision to go Fair Trade.
- For example, did you know that there are an estimated 25 million coffee farmers in the world? And the vast majority of them farm on only a few acres of land. During the harvest season, they do alright, but over 60% of these farmers and their families have severe food shortages at between 3 and 8 months out of every year.
- And, did you know that coffee is the largest fair trade product in the United States?
- Did you know that about 80% of Europeans recognize the Fair Trade logo and are familiar with Fair Trade products, but only about a third of Americans know what Fair Trade is?
- Did you know that weavers in India who make cloth goods for Ten Thousand Villages either have leprosy or a member of their immediate family does?
- Did you know about a dove pendant at Ten Thousand Villages made by Cambodian artisans that is made from shell casings and unexploded bombs that are being dug up and defused, and that those doves represent the lives saved by de-mining the fields?
- Did you know that it was consumer demand for fair trade ice cream in Europe that convinced Unilever that it should stick to Ben and Jerry’s social consciousness business model after they bought the famous ice cream company?
- Did you know that Rotary International has a licensing agreement with Green Mountain Coffee for Rotary clubs to sell fair trade coffee that returns a portion of the profits to clean water initiatives in coffee growing regions around the world?
I didn’t until tonight. As it turns out, the Fair Trade movement is much bigger, and a lot more goes on behind the scenes, than meets the eye. But it’s all done by ordinary people who want to make a difference. Over and over again, the theme tonight was, “it may not seem like much in isolation, but together it makes a huge difference.”
Hershey’s AnswerA while back, I mentioned that Silas had written to Mr. West, then CEO of Hershey’s to ask him for fair trade chocolate. Mr. West has since left Hershey’s to work for DelMonte (another company with a less than stellar record for exploiting agricultural workers). But on May 2, Mr. West’s staff wrote back to [...] |
Have a Sarsaparilla!A couple weeks ago I got a craving for a sarsaparilla after watching the Big Lebowski one evening and then having one of the lines about sarsaparilla show up on the back end of my WordPress interface a couple days later. But where to get sarsaparilla? It’s not the kind of thing that’s prominently displayed in [...] |
