Articles
Chunky Monkey for Change: How Your Pint of Ice Cream Impacts Small Farmers
On October 31, 2024, we hosted a discussion on ethical ice cream sourcing and its impact on farmers with Patricia Llivizupa, a banana farmer and member of Asoguabo, and Cheryl Pinto, Global Head of Values Led Sourcing at Ben and Jerry’s. See the full webinar recording here.
Individual Actions We Can All Take to Transform Food Systems
Following up on her article, Pathways to Creating a Just Food System, Dana Geffner explores the barriers and opportunities to creating a just food system through this four-part series of articles, from outlining regenerative business structures to showing examples of alternative business models and alternatives to conventional shopping. In this fourth and final part of the series, she focuses on what individuals can each do to participate in transforming our food system.
Alternatives to Conventional Shopping
In part 3 of a series, Dana shares examples of people and communities around the globe who are offering consumers a way to shop that does not extract wealth out of communities. Here are a few examples of community-owned grocery stores, national organizing associations, and other models that place farmers in the driver’s seat.
Alternative Business Models Building Fair and Equitable Partnerships
In part 2 of a series on Alternative Business Structures, Dana Geffner examines a few examples of alternative business models that are building fair and equitable partnerships with organizing efforts around the world. By understanding governance structures that officially center people, supporting these efforts and replicating them, we can visualize a path to creating a food system that works for us all.
Conventional vs. Regenerative Business Structures
From manufacturers to retail grocery stores to daily farmers markets, alternative business models are paving the way to transform the food industry. In part 1 of a series, Dana Geffner explores how regenerative practices build fair and equitable partnerships prioritizing workers, small-scale farmers in the global majority, family farmers in the global minority, and farmworkers organizations. With these practices, including regenerative agriculture, we can come out the other side with a world that regenerates rather than degenerates.
Tribute to a Fair Trade Visionary: Ilana Schatz
Ilana Schatz was a fair trade hero who passed away this past July, after enduring a six-year battle with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis). She will be remembered for her leadership: her warmth, her humor, and her tireless dedication to creating a more just and compassionate world.
The Endangered Birds & Heroic Insects of TPI
Tea Promoters India share a glimpse of the wildlife gracing their tea gardens. “Sunbirds, with their vibrant plumage and delicate, curved beaks, are vital players in the intricate dance of our tea garden ecosystem.”
Pathways to Creating a Just Food System
The Global Economic System is rife with abuse and injustice. Since the power in global supply chains favors those with size and wealth, most of the people who grow, process, and produce our food suffer poverty wages, unsafe work conditions, and other rights violations. Small-scale farmers and workers are typically marginalized and disempowered in the global economic system. People are organizing in many different ways to push back against the conventional extractive business models to transform our food systems. Guest contributor, Dana Geffner shares some success stories of how different mechanisms drive a larger movement in creating a more just and sustainable food system.
Chocolate: A Bittersweet Luxury
While chocolate is considered a luxury for many of us, for small-scale farmers worldwide, it is their source of necessary income that often comes with the harsh realities of corporate control of the industry. The cocoa industry is highly consolidated with only four companies controlling nearly 90% of the chocolate market, giving them a huge amount of control over cacao farmers and the prices we see on the supermarket shelves. What does this mean for farmers and child labor and do individuals have a chance at transforming a broken system?
Cooperative Partnerships Rule Over the Market
Dary Goodrich, our Chocolate Products Manager, was recently in Peru, where the cacao harvest is just beginning. With the current global shortage of cocoa and the unprecedented surge in cocoa prices, farmers shared that they were aware of the higher-than-normal prices at the end of last year and invested more in their farms to make sure they would have a great harvest. Dary reflects more on what is happening and what this means for our farmer partners and chocolate lovers like you.
Unprecedented Chocolate Prices Reveal a Vulnerable Supply Chain
While cocoa and chocolate are beloved products for many of us, they have been receiving attention lately related to a global shortage, and the causes and consequences linked to this shortage, including a spike in prices on grocery shelves. We at Equal Exchange want to share some inside perspectives about what’s happening in the cacao world, including how climate change, commodity markets, and alternative fair trade supply chains interrelate. It’s also an opportune time to focus some deserved attention on cacao farmers.
A Look Behind the Scenes of Equal Exchange’s Quality Lab
Take a look behind the scenes of Equal Exchange's Quality Lab and watch a time-lapse video of a Production Cupping. This quick video captures a process that typically takes 45 minutes down to 34 seconds.
The Story Behind Our Alternative Trade Partnership with Gebana Burkina Faso
Since our founding, Equal Exchange has sought to partner with visionary, democratic, and sustainably-minded producer groups, distributors, food cooperatives, and natural grocery stores. This approach is no longer enough. We now have to respond to this growing corporate threat by taking our model one step further: partnering with other Alternative Trade Organizations and building bridges amongst ourselves, as if we were islands floating in a large ocean that is today’s food system. We believe this is the only way to survive, continue to thrive, and achieve our mutual goal of a food system that works for everyone, not just corporations.
The Dark Side of the Cashew Industry
“If cashew importers want to ensure that their supply chains are not tainted with forced labor and abuse, they need to very closely scrutinize where they source their products,” –Joseph Amon, Director of Human Rights Watch, Health & Human Rights Division
Sue Morris's Awesome Grassroots Distribution System: Just Food Hub
Just Food Hub is a volunteer group that distributes ethically sourced food to consumers, local organizations, buying clubs, and small businesses throughout New England. Sue Morris, a retired writer and editor living in Marshfield, Vermont, created the organization in 2021. Due to their amazing efforts, Sue and her husband, John, are one of Equal Exchange’s top customers. Sue shares more in her own words.
Colombia Series: Snapshot of an Organic Farm
Our staff recently traveled to Colombia to visit our farmer partners there. It's a common experience: when we go to source and someone asks how the trip was, it is hard to answer. The truth is, the experience is complex. So complex that we are going to take our time to share different reflections, angles, and photos over time, to give a more complex answer. To kick off this series, Lynsey Miller reflects on her visit to a lush and abundant organic coffee farm.
Reflections From Rink: The History of Our Alternative Capital Model
As we enter a new stage of Equal Exchange expanding our capital model, Equal Exchange Co-Founder and President Rink Dickinson reflects on the history of our capital model and its central role in our success in building an actual alternative economic model.
Who Grows the Cacao in Your Chocolate?
Starting around 2000, labor abuses in the cocoa industry began to get international attention. You may have heard about poverty wages, unsafe working conditions, the worst forms of child labor and even modern-day slavery. You may have heard that farming practices that damage the environment were common, too. But what’s going on with that now? Have things gotten any better? (Article updated February 2024)
Current Challenges for Small-Scale Avocado Farmers in Michoacán
At Equal Exchange, we take pride in our model of truly responsible sourcing that promotes economic justice, environmental sustainability, and community development in regions where our products are grown. Despite the efforts made to cultivate positive change, however, there are certain macro-level issues that continue to impact our sourcing partners and their communities. For avocado farming co-operatives PRAGOR and Integradora Vics—our partners in the state of Michoacán, Mexico—the most pressing challenges include falling sales prices amid rising input costs, market rigidity in US stores, and the negative effects of climate change.
These Avocado Farmers Welcome Monarchs
Farmland can be conservation land—when managed with that goal in mind. Monarch butterflies could soon be listed as endangered because of their drastic population decline. While you could plant native milkweed or nectar plants as waystations to help support the population, the farmers in central Mexico who supply Equal Exchange avocados are also protecting and restoring the forests where these amazing butterflies spend the winter.