The Big Swap: Shea Butter
March 05, 2010 @ 09:00 AM
This entry continues our Big Swap series with shea butter. The Big Swap is a simple idea: for the next two weeks, swap out something you buy regularly for the Fair Trade alternative. Coffee, chocolate, cutting boards, bananas, and more. Learn more.
The Broken System
Shea butter has a rich history; the traditions of making it passed through generations of African women. It is well known as “women’s gold” because it is often the only source of income for economically marginalized women. Unfortunately, most shea butter on the market in the United States and Europe is not fairly traded meaning that the women who actually gather and hand craft the oil receive a fraction of the price.
The work involved in creating the shea butter is labor-intensive. The shea nuts are picked (in some environments, the women are at risk of scorpion or snake bites) and then the pulp has to be removed. The buts are cleaned, boiled, shelled and the seeds extracted. After the seeds are dried in the sun, the seeds are crushed, roasted and pounded. Once water is added, a paste is created which is kneaded repeatedly and beaten into a foam floats to the surface. This foam is washed until the impurities are removed. After a final boiling, the top layer is skimmed off to create the butter that is what we know as shea butter. It takes 20 to 30 hours to produce one kilogram of handcrafted shea butter. This is traded at $1 or less in the market and the laborer only receives a fraction of that dollar for 30 hours of work!
Fair Trade Shea Butter from producers like Alaffia has the power to change lives of the cooperative members. Very specifically, Alaffia was formed to help West African communities become sustaimable through the fair trade of indigenous resources, like shea. Women in West Africa have been excluded from the formal education sector which means they cannot read or write, making them less valuable as employees. However, a main component of the Alaffia Cooperative is empowerment so the women are acknowledged for their unique skills, traditions and knowledge and compensated accordingly. Alaffia pays 15-25% above market prices for shea nuts and the cooperative members receive a salary that is more than 4 times the average family income in Togo. Additionally, members receive full medical care, employment security and paid vacation.
Through direct involvement in the entire process — from gathering the wild shea nuts and crafting the butter, to distribution locally and abroad — Alaffia cooperative members receive fair and steady incomes. In addition, 10% of sales always go directly back to our community empowerment projects. The protective and emollient properties of Shea Butter are a huge benefit in skincare. Check out Alaffia’s skincare and bodycare products here.
Now What?
We want to hear what you’re Swapping, why you’re Swapping, where you’re Swapping, we want to know! So share your swapping story in the comments section of this post.
The Big Swap: Rice
March 04, 2010 @ 09:00 AM
This entry continues our Big Swap series with rice. The Big Swap is a simple idea: for the next two weeks, swap out something you buy regularly for the Fair Trade alternative. Coffee, chocolate, cutting boards, bananas, and more. Learn more.
The Broken System
According to the Educational Network for Global and Grassroots Exchange (ENGAGE), rice is a main staple for 3 billion people around the world and employs over 1 billion farmers on all continents except Antarctica and yet world prices have fallen for rice farmers. In Thailand, the world’s biggest rice exporter, 68% of farmers have debt that is three times their income, making it nearly impossible to get out of debt or send their children to school. Often, farmers turn to other ways of making money, seeking work in sweatshops or in the commercial sex industry.
Additionally, much of today’s rice cultivation uses heavy pesticides and fertilizers. This is expensive over time, further contributing to the farmer’s debt. And making them sick with pesticide-related health issues.
Fair Trade Rice is not only of highest quality but ensures that farmers can get out of debt and care for their families. Organic Fair Trade Rice, like our rice from Alter-Eco further ensures sustainability for the environment. Due to the changes in farming methods, soil fertility is improved and there is no longer chemical runoff into local rivers which was negatively impacting wildlife. Farmers have reported noticing an increase in frogs, birds and fish.
“Rice is something that is very important to the farmer, the farmer’s family, and to our livelihood. It’s not just food for us. If you buy Fair Trade organic food for your health and the health of your family, you should know that you are getting more than that, because you are helping people to construct another world, an alternative for living.”
-Pakphum Inpaen, Thai Fair Trade Jasmine rice farmer
Join Carolyn Barnwell, in the video, Grains of Change: The People’s Voice as she journeys through northeastern Thailand to visit with farmers who are practicing Fair Trade, organic, sustainable agriculture.
Now What?
We want to hear what you’re Swapping, why you’re Swapping, where you’re Swapping, we want to know! So share your swapping story in the comments section of this post.
The Big Swap: Tea
March 02, 2010 @ 12:00 PM
This entry continues our Big Swap series with tea. The Big Swap is a simple idea: for the next two weeks, swap out something you buy regularly for the Fair Trade alternative. Coffee, chocolate, cutting boards, bananas, and more. Learn more.
The Broken System
Much like the chocolate and coffee we have already featured in The Big Swap, tea is yet another fixture in our daily routines that starts with a complicated process and often mis-treated workers. Much of the tea we drink originates from the mountains in Africa and southeast Asia. Good crops require high altitudes and good rainfall and incredibly long hours from the tea pickers. Tea plantation workers tend to make even less than the minimum wage of other agricultural workers. Literacy rates among tea workers and their families are very low. Hundreds of people die each year from water-borne illnesses as most plantations do not have portable drinking systems or drainage systems. While the plantations are required to have primary educational facilities on-site, once the children pass through those initial years of education, they are expected to join their parents in the fields. This continues the broken system of labor in the tea industry where families who are born into the tea plantations do not have other opportunities.
Fair Trade Tea literally has the power to change lives. In a short film about tea workers in southern India, a family from the Chamraj Tea Estate is featured. All of the issues described in the broken system are addressed and reversed. The Fair Trade Premium allows a joint board who represents the workers to determine how to spend the additional income. Thus far, this particular estate offers education up to the college level. Parents only pay a very small school fee and the Fair Trade premium has allowed the estate to purchase computers, a school bus and to pay for the teacher salaries. They have also begun a pension scheme which prevents older family members from being an additional financial burden on their families. They are also developing a housing solution which helps families put money away to purchase land once t hey retire from the tea plantation. As heath issues have largely been undealt with on other plantations, the Chamraj Tea Estate has even been able to hire medical professionals and offers free cooking gas and typhoid vaccinations. It is hard to imagine how making a simple choice like drinking fair trade tea can make a difference. But, collectively, it can literally contribute to changing people’s lives. Check out our tea selection from Choice Teas, the first US tea maker to receive the Fair Trade mark.
Now What?
We want to hear what you’re Swapping, why you’re Swapping, where you’re Swapping, we want to know! So share your swapping story in the comments section of this post.
The Big Swap: Shopping
February 26, 2010 @ 12:20 PM
This entry continues our Big Swap series with shopping. The Big Swap is a simple idea: for the next two weeks, swap out something you buy regularly for the Fair Trade alternative. Coffee, chocolate, cutting boards, bananas, and more. Learn more.
The Broken System
Ellis James, author of The Better World Shopping Guide, frames the problem that drove him to write his book by saying “Money is power”. This is a very familiar phrase and we use it often But, what does it really mean? When you hear that phrase, do you instantly begin thinking of other people – people in your view who actually have money or have power? You may not be famous and you may not feel powerful but the truth is, if you have any money at all to spend, you wield power with each dollar you spend. As consumers, we have the power to vote with each purchase we make.
According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the average American spends around $10,000 on goods and services so that means we have 10,000 opportunities to vote. If you’re purchasing for your family, that you can take that $10,000 and multiply it by each member of your family! You can determine, by the companies you choose to do business with, if your dollars will destroy or build the environment, communities and most importantly the lives of people around the globe.
At Trade as One, we often get calls and emails from individuals whose eyes have been open to the realities of modern-day slavery, extreme poverty, and environmental abuse and now want to shop purposefully and wisely. It can be difficult to do all the research individually to know which food, cleaning supplies or even cars are made in the most ethical way. We are excited to be able to refer you to The Better World Shopping Guide, small enough to fit in a purse or keep in the car!
The Better World Shopping Guide: a handy pocket shopping guide. A comprehensive, up to date, user-friendly guide for socially and environmentally responsible consumers. This book gives a vast range of products an A-F ranking so you can quickly tell the ‘good guys’ from the ‘bad guys’- turning your grocery list into a powerful tool to change the world. This guide is organized into the most common product categories including coffee, energy bars, cell phones, gasoline, clothing, fast food, cars, water and more. Whether you are concerned about environmental sustainability, human rights, social justice, community involvement or animal protection, you will find this guide to be an essential companion. To be clear, not every company rated highly in this book is Fair Trade. This guide is meant to show which companies are better than others, and to help guide purchasing decisions in categories where Fair Trade isn’t always an option.
At the very end of the guide, there are two pages of resources that can help you do your own research and learn more. Due to the nature of Fair Trade, you can assume any fair trade company will be automatically rated an A. But, it is fun for us to see many of our producers specifically called out on the pages of this book rated as an A or A+: AlterEco (chocolate and rice), Divine (chocolate), Thanksgiving Coffee (coffee), Choice (tea), and Canaan Fair Trade (olive oil).
Want all of this on your iPhone or iPod Touch? Click here to view the App.
Now What?
We want to hear what you’re Swapping, why you’re Swapping, where you’re Swapping, we want to know! So share your swapping story in the comments section of this post.
The Big Swap: Bananas
February 25, 2010 @ 11:12 AM
This entry continues our Big Swap series with bananas. The Big Swap is a simple idea: for the next two weeks, swap out something you buy regularly for the Fair Trade alternative. Coffee, chocolate, cutting boards, bananas, and more. Learn more.
The Broken System
Bananas are symptomatic of many of the current problems with conventional trade. The “race to the bottom,” the all-consuming drive for lower prices, has created a system where the farmers are paid little, have unacceptable working and living conditions, a few multinational corporations wield a disproportionate amount of influence, and the environment is neglected or abused.
The other factor in play here is the long history of violent abuse, bribery and murder in the banana industry’s history. Without diving into too much detail (you can read more here and here, the short story is that, over the last 100 years, a few multinational corporations have used their substantial leverage to manipulate governments, violently oppose workers rights, and bribe their way to more profits.
It’s not hard to see that something needs to change. It’s no secret that there’s money to be made in bananas, so why does so little of that money reach the farmers?
Here’s a few stats to show their popularity:
- Bananas are the most popular and most profitable fruit in the world.
- It’s estimated that 2% of the average American supermarket’s turnover is banana sales.
- According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the average American eats over 26 pounds of bananas each year, nearly twice that of any other fruit.
- Virtually everyone eats bananas – an estimated 96% in the US.
So the problem isn’t that the farmers are creating an inferior product, it’s that they’ve been excluded from the profit-making parts of the business!
There has to be a better way. Can’t all the links in the chain be treated fairly, and earn what they need to earn to live and support their families?
The Fair Trade Solution
Fair trade means that transparency, fairness, and basic human decency are built into the supply chain. Fair Trade bananas, like other Fair Trade Certified products, guarantee that the farmers are paid a living wage, that children are in schools, not working in the fields, that women are empowered and valued, and that the environment is respected and preserved.
Without Fair Trade certification, small fruit farmers often receive only a few cents a pound for their crop, far below the cost of production. Farm workers on plantations are equally disadvantaged. For example, in Ecuador, the cost of basic necessities for a family of four is $9.60 a day, but on non- Fair Trade farms, workers may earn as little as $2 a day. These disparities have lead to the widespread need for children to work in the fields to supplement their family’s income.
But Fair Trade wages are up to 6x what conventional farms pay – meaning that farmers can support their families with dignity and stability, and that their children are free to play. Organic certification means that the environment is valued and protected, ensuring that there are many more bananas for years to come.
As the statistics mentioned to the left have shown, many of us buy bananas regularly. It’s likely that you’ll purchase bananas in the next two weeks. So why not swap? Go out of your way, pay a little bit more, and know that your purchase supports a better way to do business. Here at Trade as One we don’t sell bananas, but our friends at TransFair have a tool that can help you find Fair Trade bananas and more, right in your neighborhood.
Now What?
We don’t offer bananas, but our friends at TransFair have a tool to find Fair Trade bananas near you. Happy Swapping!
We want to hear what you’re Swapping, why you’re Swapping, where you’re Swapping, we want to know! So share your swapping story in the comments section of this post.