My name is Carly Kadlec and I have been with Equal Exchange for just over two months. I am a Green Coffee Buyer. I just returned from my first big trip to visit coffee farmers in Peru and Bolivia. A big part of my job is this sort of “origin trip” to visit farmers and see how their harvest is going, discuss our quality standards with them, go over the previous year’s contracts with the co-operatives, and discuss the greater world of coffee face-to-face with farmers.
fair trade
Coming Soon: Nuts & Dried Fruit
We're proud to introduce our new line of nuts and dried fruit! Sourced from around the world, this new line of products provides an alternative to conventional snacking.
Brewing Up Connections
Over the years we have worked with cuppers from around the world as a tool to find and secure delicious coffee. We wondered, how can we better connect baristas and coffee shop owners, the folks who sell and represent the delicious coffee we work so hard to lay hands on, with coffee cuppers, the people that work so hard to get us these tasty little beans? The result: Cooperation in Quality 2013.
They’ve got the cashews. We’ve got the market. And then, nature intervenes… Part II
The cold winter months were brightened up a bit when the Equal Exchange warehouse in Portland notified us that our first shipment of Salvadoran cashews had arrived. The nuts were so tasty they were practically sold before we could unpack the container. Once in the stores, the response was tremendous. Sales reps were hanging up the phones and reporting unexpectedly large orders. We immediately contacted Aprainores and asked for twice the quantity from the following year’s harvest. We were not going to have a problem selling these tasty snacks. Our challenge was actually the reverse: Aprainores already has two Fair Trade buyers in Europe, the trees are over fifty years old, and the co-op doesn’t have a lot of extra resources to put into farm maintenance: so how can we get more?
NGO questions Fair Trade USA chocolate labeling ‘hoax’
Not-for-profit organization Fair World Project has criticized changes to Fair Trade USA’s labeling policy, which allows chocolate to carry the seal when it contains a high percentage of other ingredients like sugar that are not fairly traded.
“Fair Trade USA Undermines Fair Trade Principles and Producers to Accommodate Products”
Fair World Project (FWP), a project of the Organic Consumers Association, the nation’s largest network of green and ethical consumers, opposes Fair Trade USA’s recent changes to its labeling policy, which undermine fair trade farmers, consumers and committed fair trade brands.
10th Anniversary Trip to Peru
This July, exactly 10 years after taking a group of food co-op and natural foods store customers to visit with coffee farmers in the village of Coyona in Peru, our same group will return to to see first-hand the impact of Fair Trade.
Brewing it up in Boston for SCAA
We are super excited to have the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) host its annual event in our backyard at the Boston Convention Center April 11-14, 2013. Many of us at Equal Exchange will be attending SCAA-related events throughout the week, and we’ll also be hosting a few events of our own.
All Bananas Are Not Created Equal
March is Equal Exchange Bananas Month! We are proud to be able to share our successes and challenges with you during March. Here are a few accomplishments.
Introducing the Equal ExChangers
The Community Sales program, which works with congregations and schools, recently hired a group of part-time "Equal ExChangers" across the Southeast to build a local presence for Equal Exchange. The talented outreach team will be attending events and offering presentations to educate folks about how to bring fairly traded products to their community.