2025 Equal Exchange Summit
June 13, 2025 at Wheaton College in Norton, MA
Let’s reconnect as a community! The annual Equal Exchange Summit is a powerful gathering that brings together all stakeholders in our alternative trade network. For nearly four decades, we’ve been working together to build an alternative trade model that brings coffee, chocolate, tea, bananas, and other fairly traded goods from democratically organized small farmer co-ops in the global south to Citizen-Consumers in the north through Equal Exchange’s worker-owned cooperative.
Join us for a fun and informative gathering of all parts of our supply chain as we continue to advance our solidarity network and mission in an ever-consolidating food system that so badly needs alternatives like ours.
Calling all who want to
build a better food system
Register by filling out the form below
or email organizing@equalexchange.coop
Wheaton College, 26 E. Main Street, Norton, MA 02766
Campus Map
2025 Schedule of Events
Thursday, June 12
Welcome dinner (optional)
Early check-in available
Friday, June 13
Keynote Address author Austin Frerick
Workshops
All meals provided, followed by a party
Saturday, June 14
Breakfast (optional)
Overnight accommodation will be provided in Wheaton dorms for anyone wishing to stay on campus Thursday and/or Friday nights.
There is no charge for the event this year.
Keynote Address
Austin Frerick
Austin Frerick is an expert on agricultural and antitrust policy. In 2024, he published his debut book, entitled Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry. The book, which includes a forward by Eric Schlosser, profiles a series of powerful magnates to illustrate the concentration of power in the global food system. Barons has received universal acclaim, including a coveted starred review from both Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, and has been named one of the “Best Books of 2024” by the latter. The host of Bloomberg's Odd Lots applauded the book, remarking, "I have come away with a completely different idea of agriculture that I cannot unsee." The Times Literary Supplement (UK) noted that it is “steeped in policy and enlivened by anecdote” and the Los Angeles Review of Books said that the “prose is refreshingly accessible and nonacademic.” The book has also received praise from across the political spectrum, including a rave review from The American Conservative. It has been excerpted in The Independent (UK), Salon, and The New Republic, among others.
Austin also has a strong track record of organizing conferences and other forums to push the conversation forward on agriculture policy. He worked with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to organize a conference and publish a compendium at Yale Law School entitled “Reforming America’s Food Retail Markets,” which explored competition issues in the nation’s food retail industry. He previously spearheaded other conferences at the Yale Law School, including “Big Ag & Antitrust: Competition Policy for a Sustainable and Humane Food System.” He also created & organized the "Heartland Forum" in Storm Lake, Iowa, the first candidate forum during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary process, which focused on the impacts of economic concentration in rural America. During the 2020 presidential campaign, he advised candidates Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Pete Buttigieg on agricultural policy before ultimately serving as Co-Chair of the Biden campaign’s Agriculture Antitrust Policy Committee.
Frerick previously worked at the Open Markets Institute, the U.S. Department of Treasury, and the Congressional Research Service before becoming a Fellow at Yale University. He is a 7th generation Iowan and 1st generation college graduate, with degrees from Grinnell College and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He also serves on the Board of Directors as Vice President for Common Good Iowa and as Treasurer for the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project. In 2022, The Advocate named him a "Champion of Pride.” He has been quoted in The New York Times, National Geographic, Bloomberg, Politico, Vanity Fair, and The Washington Post, among others.
More details will be added to this page as they are announced.
Questions? Email Danielle and Frankie at organizing@equalexchange.coop or call (774) 776-7366.