Tag: fair trade

By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Green Business Tagged with , , , ,

A brief explore of Montpelier, Vermont, tiny capital of a sparsely populated and very progressive state. More brief than it would be, because it was minus 4 F as we were walking around last night.

Based on a very small sample—two restaurants and one Bed & Breakfast that we tried, and a few more whose windows we peered into (including the local cooking school and the artisan bakery it operates), this town may have one of the highest percentages of people who pay attention to the food they eat—to its provenance, the craft of growing and processing it, as well as to the taste and nutritional qualities. And I didn’t even visit the food co-op.

But it’s amazing. All three establishments—a creperie called Skinny Pancake and a bagel/burrito coffee shop called Bagitios, both in the center of town, and High Hill Inn, a B&B in East Montpelier up on a hill—had menus emphasizing local foods, even in a frigid Vermont January. Fair trade beverages, local greens and meats, artisanal approaches to bread, beer, wine…on the menu, and heavily marketed, along with appeals to waste reduction, energy conservation, and other good green principles. High Hill was even more remarkable because the proprietor, Ann Marie, is from the American South (an area where I’ve found it very challenging to eat decently, let alone well).

I’m sure

Go team!

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Green Business, poverty Tagged with , , , , ,

(This is Part 2 of my report on the Sustainable Foods Summit. If you missed Part 1, please click here.)

And some insights that I knew already, but appreciated the reminders—most of which were echoed by several presenters:

  • Yields, quality, and taste of organics have improved a lot in the last couple of decades—often due to technology innovations that allow packaging more quickly after harvest and longer shelf life.
  • Private-label supermarket brands have moved from their original positioning as generic, low-quality price-leaders to elite niche brands.
  • The best sustainability initiatives combine multiple benefits and create wins for multiple players in the supply/consumer chain (examples include a new packaging process that lowers energy use, costs less, delivers fresher food, and reduces worker risk…a commitment to ship product on trucks with full loads…ways to turn wastes into inputs for a different process, closing the loop and reducing both pollution and cost).
  • The lack of definition for “natural” causes problems.
  • Turning cropland from food production to energy production has unforeseen consequences. For example, the much-heralded corn ethanol movement a few years ago resulted in higher food prices both in the developed markets and, critically, in developing countries where the increases led immediately to greater hunger problems—and ultimately, did not have a positive impact on the energy picture.
  • Just because other people tell you a positive initiative is impossible doesn’t mean it is. Many “impossible” goals turn out to be quite possible, once buy-in spreads through an organization or its customer base—even sourcing from small farms to serve food at big cafeterias.
  • People have a wide range of reasons for going green—from committed environmental or hunger activism to personal and family health.

Although organized by Europeans—they also do one in Amsterdam—most attenders were American or Canadian, with a handful from Latin America (including one presenter who’s part of a large family-owned sustainable sugar plantation and mill in Brazil). It looked to me that about 180 people attended. The conference had only one track, which means everyone got to hear from all the presenters—a nice change.

Despite all the questions that have no consensus answer yet (see Part 1), there was a lot of agreement:

  • GMO is a major threat to organic growers because of its ability to infiltrate and contaminate organic fields.
  • Only 3rd-party certifications (as opposed to self-declaration by a grower or an industry trade group) give the consumer something to trust in, but there’s a problem of certification clutter and oversaturation, leading not only to consumer confusion but also a burden on growers and suppliers trying to comply with and document multiple certifications—and of course, very crowded packaging labels. This is likely to shift as more comprehensive certifications (for example, covering both organic and fair trade) start to come on the market.
  • The best certifications cover not only growing methods but also working conditions—and their attention covers not only the absence of chemicals, but also positive steps to rebuild soil, spread health, etc.
  • The range of practices considered “sustainable” is quite wide, and ultimately the consumer has to decide what’s really important—but any definition of sustainability has to include an adequate livelihood for the growers and their workers.
  • Sustainable products may originate locally, or from far away, though the later can have a pretty big carbon footprint.
  • Sustainable products need sustainable packaging. Many companies have drastically reduced their packaging through careful redesign.
  • Both to save money and to reduce environmental impact, many farmers and producers are moving at least partly toward green energy sources.
  • In the end, sometimes you have to make choices. You may not be able to get organic, local or fairly traded, biodynamic, minimally processed, and appropriately packaged all in the same product—so you do the best you can and help the world reach the point where you can get all the desired attributes without having to choose among them.
  • The sustainable foods industry has a responsibility to make an impact on issues around hunger, poverty, and the economic viability of indigenous suppliers.
  • Sustainability is a process, a journey of many steps. And while all of us need to start taking at least some of those steps, even those who have been on the path a long time still can find ways to improve.

Shel Horowitz is the primary author of Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green and writes the Green And Profitable/Green and Practical monthly columns.

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By Posted on Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Green Business Tagged with , , , , ,
  • Can you preserve the soil by switching to no-till farming if it means you can’t use organic methods?
  • Which is more sustainable: a lightweight plastic bag made from virgin materials (i.e., petroleum), or a plastic clamshell using 40 times as much material, but made from recycled water bottles?
  • If biodegradable (PLA) plastics are made from GMO (genetically modified organism) corn, are they any better than non-biodegradable plastic?
  • Is organic enough of a standard, or do we hold out for the much stricter but much rarer Demeter Biodynamic certification?
  • Are food-industry giants squeezing out small artisan brands, or opening up new opportunities for them?
  • And can we achieve a food system that combines the artisan quality and chemical/petroleum independence of pre-20th century food production with the massive volume and ability to feed hungry people of the 20th century Green Revolution, while achieving the distribution necessary to end hunger?

These are some of the questions attendees at the Sustainable Foods Summit grappled with on January 18 and 19, 2011 in San Francisco.

Conference presenters included a number of certification agencies and a few consultants (including me on the marketing side) as well as producers and retailers both from major companies like Tesco’s Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, Safeway and White Wave (whose brands include Silk and Horizon) as well as much smaller companies like Theo Chocolate and Washington State’s Stone-Buhr Flour.

Some of the things I hadn’t heard before:

  • It’s well-known that cows are a huge source of methane emissions (a worse climate change problem than CO2)—but I hadn’t known that cow burps cause almost twice the emissions of cow manure, and that cow burping can be greatly reduced through feeding the cows a healthier organic grass-based diet rich in flax, which also raises the Omega-3 level in the milk (a good thing).
  • Cows fed a healthy organic diet live an average of three times as long and have more lactation cycles; this translates directly into increased profitability of the farmer.
  • Organic farming can sequester 7000 pounds per acre of CO2 per year.
  • By converting some acreage to oilseed crops such as sunflowers, farms can supply a goodly percentage of their energy needs, feed cows, and gather the seeds as a cash crop. (These four bullets from Theresa Marquez of Organic Valley dairy cooperative; the percentages on cow emissions were from Bree Johnson of Straus Family Creamery)
  • Makers of biodegradable plastics often source from GMO corn. (Adrianna Michael, Organic and Wellness News)
  • No-till farming vastly reduces soil erosion (which can lower the altitude of a conventional farm by more than a foot in 40 years), but is difficult to do without chemical weed control.
  • Organic, interplanted, and no-till soil hold a lot more water, and look, smell, and even taste healthier than conventional soil.
  • Some private-label supermarket brands, including Safeway’s O Organics, are now being marketed through other retail channels not owned by the original company. (Alex Petrov, Safeway)
  • Even though it’s more expensive to start with, you get 20% more yield from a natural beef patty compared to a conventional one, which makes progress toward evening out the price. (Maisie Greenawalt: Bon Appetit Management Company, an institutional food service provider for colleges, museums, and corporate cafeterias)

(This report will continue tomorrow)

Shel Horowitz is the primary author of Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green and writes the Green And Profitable/Green and Practical monthly columns.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Corporate Social Responsibility, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, poverty, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , ,

Editor’s Note: Sometimes I like to post things to stimulate controversy, and thus I’m running this guest post by Alexis Bonari, critiquing one of the sacred cows of the sustainability movement: fair trade certification.

From my own point of view as a consumer, I look to Fair Trade certification for many products, especially chocolate. I am all-too-aware of the use of child slaves to harvest cacao, particularly in the Ivory Coast, and as a lover of chocolate, I don’t want to be a party to that. Fair Trade labeling is my assurance that the cacao was grown honestly.

I also disagree with Bonari’s two points:

First, there’s nothing, to my mind, inherently evil about mechanized farming, as long as it’s done sustainably. Many Fair Trade products are also organic, and that’s a big step in the right direction. Systemically, of course, we should be looking at how we power our tractors and all the rest of it. And we can all look for ways to increase our “locavore” quotient by consuming products (including food) created locally. But I do believe there is a place for imports in the mix, and in fact, in my book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, the section on “Local as Green” is followed immediately by one called “Global as Green.”

And second, Far Trade (while far from perfect) certainly does provide a wedge against poverty. Farmers in Fair Trade co-ops are demonstrably better off than most who sell through conventional channels and who have no choice but to accept a pathetically low bid. Remember, too, that economic leverage varies a lot from country to country, and differences can be orders of magnitude. There are many parts of the world where an income of $25 or $50 a day puts someone in the upper half of the population, but it may only cost a few cents to cook a meal.

I’ll turn the floor over to Alexis now—but I’d love to know your thoughts. Please add your comment below.
—Shel Horowitz

Marketing Honesty: Is Fair Trade Really a Fair Deal?

By Alexis Bonari

The Fair Trade label has become a marketing boon for many companies. Soon, even Nestlé’s Kit Kat bar will be made from Fair Trade sources.

Essentially, the term Fair Trade refers to the following business model: companies pay craftsmen and farmers in developing countries an increased wage for goods that are traditionally produced in that region. These goods are produced with an eye to minimal environmental impact. Examples of Fair Trade goods are: bananas, honey, cotton, wine, handcrafts, coffee, sugar, and tea. As of 2008, the annual amount of revenue generated by Fair Trade goods amounted to approximately US$4.08 billion worldwide.

While the popularity of Fair Trade goods is almost certainly a byproduct of good intentions on the part of consumers, is there a downside to the Fair Trade industry?

The problem is twofold:

1. Unsustainable Markets
While incentivizing the production of local crops and handcrafts may temporarily short-circuit the cycle of poverty in certain communities, it does nothing to address the problem of supply and demand. First world countries lead the global economic market by producing technology and mass-produced products. India, and other developing countries experiencing economic growth, are educating their people and encouraging them to adopt mechanized means of production and farming.

Fair Trade workers are being incentivized to continue producing the very same products that are keeping them in poverty. A comprehensive solution would encourage education and new business ventures.

2. Perpetuation of a Toxic Cycle
Simply put, Fair Trade policies perpetuate a system that denies the citizens of developing countries control over their own businesses. Under the banner of Fair Trade, foreign companies are offering them pennies on the dollar that a citizen of the US or a member of the EU would make for the same service.

Fair Trade is a case of inaccurate marketing. The consumer is convinced that they’re working toward eradicating poverty in the Third World. In reality, Fair Trade could potentially hurt the very people it intends to help.

Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is a passionate blogger on the topic of education and free college scholarships. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

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By Posted on Posted in Business-general, Energy & Sustainability, poverty, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Carmen, Costa Rica: A banana tree is a graceful thing, especially when it gets old and tall. Thousands of acres of bananas may look beautiful, but to me, the vast plantation was the most depressing place I saw in Costa Rica.

Carmen is a company town. Both Del Monte and Chiquita have facilities there, and the banana fields stretch for miles, broken only by thin strips of border plantings separating the fields from the roads and from each other, or by the drab company houses and the packaging facilities.

Most of our trip around Costa Rica has involved protected wilderness areas, and we’ve seen what bananas look like in nature; they grow a few here and there amidst the astounding biodiversity of the rainforest. Thousands of trees in orderly rows would not be found in nature.

A nearby organic farmer told us that this kind of monoculture requires enormous amounts of pesticides and herbicides. Not so good for the planet in this country that prides itself on its eco-consciousness.

That claim is somewhat at odds with what we observed and heard. Yes, the country has done a great job on land preservation, putting aside 25 percent of the country as protected areas. But we saw a lot of people applying pesticides (usually not wearing protective gear) on the fields along the roadsides. We saw almost no organic products in the stores. And a coffee merchant told us that hardly anyone rows organically because the yields are too small (something that’s even more true on a biodiverse farm, where farmers have to harvest different crops in small amounts and develop markets willing to take those small amounts). My guess is that in such a humid climate, it’s really hard to keep the pests down. Even the much smaller banana farms we saw protected the fruit from animals and insects with blue plastic bags (which then make it much easier to harvest the fruit, too.

And then there’s the matter of conditions for the workers. We met someone who had interviewed some of them, and she told us the spraying is done aerially and the workers are unprotected. They work 11-hour shifts with no break and get paid strictly on piecework.

I understand now why I once heard an interview with Barbara Kingsolver, promoting her wonderful locavore book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, about eating locally. She said, “some of my friends gave up meat to make the world better. I gave up bananas.”

I’ve been buying only organic bananas for a few years; I think I need to find a source for bananas that are not only organic, but fair trade. The way they are grown commercially is not sustainable, and doesn’t make me feel very good.

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