Simple Suggestion #6 of 100... Drink fair trade coffee or tea

At the Social Justice Institute that I attended on the weekend, there was a session on Fair Trade running at the same time as the workshop I gave. I wish I could have bi-located, as there's a lot about Fair Trade that I don't know. What I have learned about Fair Trade is that for a product to be Fair Trade certified, its production is carefully scrutinized in regards to fair labour practices and safe working conditions, whether wages are appropriate, and whether the product is produced using environmentally sustainable practices. What I just recently learned (through chatting with the reps at the Fair Trade booth on Saturday) is that not only can we drink Fair Trade coffee and tea and enjoy fair trade chocolate and other cocoa products, but there are more and more products being certified as Fair Trade: spices, vanilla extract, molasses, sugar, and quinoa to name a few.

The whole point of Fair Trade is that farmers in developing countries aren't being exploited by large corporations, but are being treated fairly and using their land well. It means we might pay a bit more for the pleasure of indulging in their products, but isn't that better than decimating their lands and families? Unfortunately, a lot of big name tea, coffee and chocolate companies are more concerned with getting their commodities at the lowest price than they are with ensuring their producers are being treated fairly. I don't know about you, but I can't support injustice like that. I'm willing to pay a bit more (and perhaps cut my consumption in half to afford it) so that there's no "slavery flavour" in what I eat.

If you want to know more about Fair Trade and the good things happening in Canada in that regard, check out www.fairtrade.ca, and buy Fair Trade whenever possible. If it's not possible where you live, ask for it. We consumers have the power to effect change, but sometimes we have to speak up and act for that change.

P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? See here.

Fair trade chocolate, again

This morning, Avaaz.org is in my inbox with an appeal asking that we use its handy-dandy email form to send letters to chocolate companies that have dealings with chocolate exporters in Ivory Coast. Apparently, Laurent Gbagbo, recently defeated president of Ivory Coast, is clinging to power in the country, backed by militias who are being supported with funds from corrupt cocoa companies. The country is on the verge of civil war, and UN Peacekeepers are in danger, too. Alassane Ouattara, the winner of the recent democratic election, has yet to get anywhere near his rightful place as leader of the country. Avaaz urges, "Chocolate lovers of the world, let's flood popular brands like Nestlé, M&M/Mars and Hershey's with messages to end trade with Gbagbo now and commit to working only with the legitimate government."

If you want to participate in Avaaz's efforts, here's a link: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/ivory_coast_chocolate/?cl=907308509&v=8161

Avaaz has provided all sorts of information regarding its reasons for this initiative. Here are two that caught my attention:

Hot Chocolate: How cocoa fueled the conflict in Côte d'Ivoire - A report by Global Witness, June 2007:
http://www.globalwitness.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/cotedivoire.pdf%20

Ending Child Trafficking in West Africa: Lessons from the Ivorian cocoa sector - Anti-Slavery International, December 2010:
http://www.antislavery.org/includes/documents/cm_docs/2010/c/cocoa_report_for_website.pdf 

As good as all of this is, it doesn't quite go far enough yet. If Avaaz really wanted to have an impact, they might suggest that consumers vote with their pocketbooks and stop buying chocolate from those companies that deal with unethical cocoa sources. So far, people haven't quite put the pieces together to the point that fair trade chocolate is the only chocolate of choice. But my mother-in-law has gotten the message, and this year for Christmas, she gave our family some marvelous fair trade bars and chocolate chips! It's one way to ensure that consumer power is supporting the good of people and the planet.

Fair trade chocolate isn't yet a choice where most people buy chocolate. Maybe it's time we approach our convenience/grocery store managers and suggest that they consider supplying Cocoa Camino bars, or the Ten Thousand Village brand. Know of any others to suggest? Let me know!

Simple pleasures... and fair trade chocolate

This week is my husband's birthday, so I made chocolate chip cookies. Homemade chocolate chip cookies at our house are fairly rare and rather expensive, because I've given up on the usual chocolate chips you buy at any grocery store. The company that produces them buys cocoa without caring about anything but passing on low prices to consumers. The only way I can be sure that human trafficking, civil war and child slavery aren't ingredients in my cookies is by buying fair trade chocolate chips, which are usually at least four to six times more expensive than the other kind.

Up to five years ago, I was an oblivious chocolate lover, never giving a thought to labour practices in equatorial countries that produce cocoa. But as Carol Off, CBC journalist and author of Bitter Chocolate: Investigating the Dark Side of the World's Most Seductive Sweet (2006, Random House Canada, ISBN 0679313192) says, "as consumers, what we want is cheap goods. But what we should know is that when we consume something that is cheap, generally someone is paying for it someplace else. That's the message about chocolate."

When Lee and I attended Mark A. Burch's workshop on Voluntary Simplicity and Nonviolence the year before Carol's book came out, my eyes were opened to many things I really didn't want to see. When I heard about children -- the same age as my girls -- addicted to drugs and forced to work on chocolate plantations to the point of exhaustion and death, I almost cried. That and many other violences built into our consumer culture made the weekend workshop tough to take in, and I carried the grief and guilt twins around for about a week afterward. But as Mark says, guilt is only good for about ten seconds, and then you have to do something with it. So I did my own research and made a lot of changes, one being that I began to buy fair trade certified chocolate whenever it could be found.

The cost of fair trade is what chocolate really should cost in terms of paying its producers an equitable wage for what they do. Fair Trade also means, usually, that farmers employ more organic methods to grow cocoa berries, leaving soil, air and water in better condition than non-organic growers do.

Chocolate used to be a luxury afforded only by the wealthy on a regular basis. And when you pay the price for fair trade chocolate ($19.75/kg at Earth's General Store), it becomes a precious commodity once again. My girls understand about the problems with cheap chocolate. Suzanna even did a school presentation on it. We've stopped giving out mini-chocolate bar Halloween treats. We never gobble an entire chocolate bar all at once any more. One small piece, savoured and appreciated, is enough. These days, I make ginger snaps, orange shortbreads and oatmeal cookies a lot more often, saving fair trade chocolate chips for special occasions.

I suppose I should also be writing to grocery stores, governments and chocolate giants about refusing sources of tainted chocolate, but then I should also be advocating fair labour practices around almost every item I purchase. It gets overwhelmingly complex when I think about it. But being someone who wants to keep things simple, the simplest thing I can do is vote with my purchasing power, buy fair trade, and share what I've learned with others so they can do likewise. And you can join me!