Small Farmers. Big Change.

“Our 20-year vision contemplates a mutually cooperative community and this week overlapping events in West Bridgewater and Nairobi demonstrate what that can mean.  Cuppers from two of our African partners are here to participate in our 5^th annual Co-operation in Quality seminar; simultaneously two staff people from the same co-operatives are in Nairobi with Twin Trading participating in a QMS (Quality Management Systems) seminar.   It’s cool to think of two different coffee co-operatives, two different Alternative Trade Organizations, in two different countries pursuing our shared vision.  This is a great example of the network approach we use in sourcing great coffee from great sources.”   Todd Caspersen, Director of Purchasing, Equal Exchange

Lydia Nabulumbi, cupper at Gumutindo co-op in Uganda and Jodi Anderson, Equal Exchange Natural Foods sales representative, cupping coffee at Equal Exchange’s Quality Control Lab in West Bridgewater, Mass. 

It’s also a great way to build community. Yesterday, a team of Equal Exchange staff accompanied our two guests to the Equal Exchange Café in Boston and to several other neighborhood cafés, natural food stores, and food co-operatives that have long partnered with us to provide alternatives to the corporate-controlled, profit-driven, and impersonal food system that is increasingly dictating what and how we eat.

Above, Lydia Nabulumbi, a cupper from Gumutindo co-op in Uganda, Amen Mtui, a cupper from KNCU co-op in Tanzania, Brian O’Connell, Equal Exchange Food Service Sales Representative, and Equal Exchange cafe customer Guadelupe Gamboa sharing ideas at the Equal Exchange Cafe in Boston, Mass.

At the Harvest Food Co-op in Jamaica Plain, MA

Our vision is both ambitious in impact and human in scale.  We look at food economies, local communities (whether here or abroad), quality of product, quality of relationship, transparency and ethical business practicies, human dignity and right livelihoods.  We think that the two weeks Lydia and Amen have spent with us at Equal Exchange and yesterday’s visits out in the larger community – sharing knowledge, experiences – and quite simply, just having fun brought us another step closer on our path.

Photos taken by Ashley Symons, Marketing Writer, Equal Exchange

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Where would you put your trust?

Clearly, it depends on where you’re situated in the food system. If you’re Dupont or Monsanto, you might view the threat of climate change as an opportunity and rush in to sell more geneticially engineered crops to farmers. This probably would also be the perfect moment to lobby the government to accept less stringent biotechnology regulations covering those very same genetically modified crops.

What other opportune moment would cause long-term rivals, Dupont and Monsanto, to put aside their competition over the sale of seeds and look for a bigger payback? That’s right, these two agri-business giants have joined together with Archer Midland Daniels and Deere, no small players themselves, to launch a new warm and fuzzy initiative to help feed the world: the Global Harvest Inititiative.

Read what our friends at the National Family Farm Coalition have to say about this new coalition and its efforts to provide for the world’s poor. (more…)

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Quick news flash from the Mexico-US Solidarity Network

News and Analysis 
September 14-20, 2009

Border wall a waste of money
A report issued on Thursday by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) found over 3,000 breaches of a still-unfinished 600-mile border wall which cost more than US$2.4 billion since 2005.  The federal government will have to spend US$6.5 billion over the next 20 years simply to maintain the wall, according to the report.  Despite the high price tag, officials have found no way to determine if the wall is helping to deter undocumented immigration, according to the GAO report.  Academics report that less than half of undocumented immigrants are apprehended on any given trip to the border, and of those, the success rate for a second or third try is around 95%.  “There is no reason to believe that additional investment in the fence project – both physical fencing and the new ‘virtual fence’ – will create effective deterrent,” said Wayne Cornelius, one of the nation’s leading immigration researchers.

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