Individual Actions We Can All Take to Transform Food Systems

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.

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Alternatives to Conventional Shopping

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.

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Alternative Business Models Building Fair and Equitable Partnerships

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.  

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Conventional vs. Regenerative Business Structures

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.

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Pathways to Creating a Just Food System

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.

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Chocolate: A Bittersweet Luxury

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?

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Sue Morris's Awesome Grassroots Distribution System: Just Food Hub

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.

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From Alternative Trade to Corporate Consolidation
Food System Greta Merrick Food System Greta Merrick

From Alternative Trade to Corporate Consolidation

Antitrust laws were put into place for a reason. The more consolidated our food system becomes and the greater control corporate monopolies exercise, the worse the outcome will be for farmers, workers, consumers, and the planet. As we continue to double-down on our efforts to support small farmers employing sustainable farming practices, we can—and must—take back our food system.

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Citizen-Consumer Reflection: Strength in the Commitment of Many

Citizen-Consumer Reflection: Strength in the Commitment of Many

Thirty-seven years ago, I did not identify primarily as a consumer, and the label still doesn’t quite fit, but I did identify as a citizen open to learning how Nicaraguans were creating more equal social relationships. When volunteering with newly formed sewing cooperatives, I met small farmers who shared stories of how they never were paid a fair price by the buyers of the fruits of their hard labor. I became a small bridge of sales of Nica coffee beans through Equal Exchange.

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Equal Exchange’s Radical Model: Building Democratic Trade Networks in Contrast to Conventional Supply Chains

Equal Exchange’s Radical Model: Building Democratic Trade Networks in Contrast to Conventional Supply Chains

In the early years it was very clear that Equal Exchange was radically different and breaking many of the “rules” of the market. During this time fair trade or alternative trade was barely known so by definition, it was different because there were no alternatives.

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Worker Co-ops: Solving Societal Problems

Worker Co-ops: Solving Societal Problems

Five years ago Equal Exchange started our Citizen-Consumer work to invite our supporters more deeply into our model, to build a community that is working toward a better food system, and to further develop our democratic brand. Read one of the many stories that Sue could tell you about her life as an activist and how her heart came to be touched by the work of Equal Exchange.

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