Monthly Archives: August 2009

Choose Fairtrade Liberation Nuts!

1

Lisa Zaslow is a guest blogger and the views expressed herein are her own and do not necessarily represent the views of Shared Interest Society.

Lisa is a passionate fair trade and microfinance activist currently living in North Carolina, USA. She is the founder of Blue People Fair Trade Ltd., an online store that specializes in fair trade and environmentally friendly accessories from all over the world. If you would like to be a guest blogger, please contact us with your interest.

Just a few years ago, the sick, injured and heavily pregnant would have to travel over long distances in Mchinji and wait for treatment in the scorching sun. There was no water, nowhere to cook and no beds for the “guardians”-the relatives and others who accompanied and cared for the sick and injured. The hospital in Mchinji District, which lies on the western side of the Central Region of Malawi, was built over 20 years ago for a population of 275,000. Now, the hospital must minister to over 600,000 people, many from over the border in Mozambique and Zambia. In 2008, the Fairtrade Premium provided by the International Nut Producer Co-operative was able to build a guardian shelter for the community, a plain brick building that provides safety and comfort for the guardians that care for their sick relatives.

During the 1980s, TWIN Trading brought together small scale, marginalized nut farmers from Mozambique, Malawi, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Brazil, Peru, India and El Salvador to form the International Nut Producer Co-operative (INC). By forming INC, TWIN hoped to facilitate a dramatic shift in the influence of farmer co-operatives with the launch of Liberation Foods.

Liberation Foods, a 100% fairtrade nut company, was started in the UK by Twin Trading and Equal Exchange. Both organizations were dedicated to establishing long term relationships with producers, empowering small farmers and developing the fair trade supply chain for coffee, tea, nuts, cocoa, sugar and fruit farmers. These farmers lacked market information and technical expertise to market their own crops. They also had to cope with limited infrastructure and poor access to capital. Before the co-operative was formed and fairtrade was practiced, nut farmers were easily cheated by unscrupulous buyers who manipulated the scales in their favor, cheating the farmers out of a fair price. Now the scales are standardized to ensure transparency and a stable, fair price for the farmers.

The producers who grow and gather the nuts, over 22,000 smallholder farmers from co-operatives in Asia, Africa and Latin America, own a 42% share of Liberation Foods, making them part owners and enabling them to participate in the direction of the company. This helps make the farmers a real force in the market, moving them up the supply chain, maximizing their returns and offering a more secure future for them, their families and for their communities.

As well as peanuts from Malawi and Nicaragua, Liberation Nuts sells cashews from India, El Salvador and Mozambique and brazil nuts from the rainforests of Peru, Bolivia and Brazil. Buying brazil nuts, especially on fairtrade terms, helps protect the Amazon Rainforest. Brazil nut gathering provides an income which is sustainable and doesn’t involve cutting and destroying the rainforest. This helps to protect the communities in these regions and the people’s livelihoods-as well as preventing the rainforest from being cut down.

Liberation Foods is a Community Interest Company (CIC) which means it is run for the benefit of the community it serves…the nut famers and gatherers and their families. It supplies its own Liberation branded nut snacks to major supermarkets and health food stores all over the UK.

Liberation Nuts’ vision is a world in which smallholder farmers can enjoy secure and sustainable livelihoods, fulfill their potential and decide their future. Like it says on their website, (http://www.chooseliberation.com), they want to “help people trade their way out of poverty and bring about positive change in an unfair trading system, whilst having fun at what we do-we want to change the world, one nut at a time”.

Related Articles

Namayiana - Fair Trade Producer Visit Click here to learn how you can invest in fair trade.

Click here to donate to the Shared Interest Foundation 		Mexican coffee farmer at work in the fields


EmailBookmark and Share



Spotlight on Fairtrade Businesses – Jurang Fairtrade

4

Each week, Shared Interest will highlight a business who is activiely promoting Fairtrade in their community.  This blog post does not imply endorsement by Shared Interest.  Please contact us if you would like the ‘spotlight’ on your company.

Jurang Fairtrade is a 100% dedicated office supplier, supplying Fairtrade coffee and tea to businesses, organisations and schools all over Greater Manchester. We believe that it makes business sense do ethical business and that any business, of any size will benefit from having a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policy. Fairtrade is a key contribution to any CSR policy and we help you make that contribution through our premier service.

Our current clients illustrate how we successfully serve a number of different businesses and organisations; from business centres to churches and from council offices to schools. Where possible we extend our office supply to include a Fairtrade Table; a Fairtrade snack and vending service for employees. This service brings delicious and ethical snacks into the workplace and helps employees to think about Fairtrade as well as making a practical difference by choosing a Fairtrade snack. Getting a Fairtrade table comes at no cost to your business and is designed not to interfere with your day-to-day business activities. Additionally this service further extends an organisation’s CSR policy. Continue reading →

Related Articles

Namayiana - Fair Trade Producer Visit Click here to learn how you can invest in fair trade.

Click here to donate to the Shared Interest Foundation 		Mexican coffee farmer at work in the fields


EmailBookmark and Share



Business Training for Rwandan Fair Trade Producers

1

During a busy 10 days in Rwanda Andrea Wilkinson visited six producer organisations, met several stakeholders of the project, presented at the trainer graduation day and saw 5,000 trees that had been planted as a result of the environmental training by one of the producer groups.

“The evaluation trip was a great success, it was incredibly exciting for us to mark the end of the first year of this project and to start seeing the results,” said Andrea. “And what results they were! All of the tier one producer organisations (many of whom are already exporting their goods) are developing business plans and have made great strides in updating and developing their financial systems.“

Beatrice from BN producers (who make banana wine and mushroom flour) was extremely happy with the training. Beatrice said: “We as a management team have learnt so much, we now take our money to the bank instead of keeping it in the office, this is much safer. We also now keep records of all income and expenditure and we are happy to say that we are making a profit. Before we would not be able to tell you this as we kept no books. Now we keep them and we are equipped because of the training to read them and plan for the future.”

Another of the groups, COOPABU a co-operative based in Butare in the south of the country, told Andrea that they have learnt that money really does grow on trees in Rwanda. As a result of the training that they received in January with our environmental partner REDO (Rural Environmental Development Organisation), they realised that they needed sustainable sources of raw materials in order to make their products which are wooden craft products and sisal baskets. They used the knowledge they learnt at the training and wrote to their district officer to ask for assistance in a tree planting mission. In April over 500 of their co‑operative members planted 5,000 trees and sisal between the trees in order to have a sustainable source of raw materials. They are an inspiration to other producer organisations.

The 10 days ended with a graduation ceremony that acknowledged the endless hours of hard work and commitment put in by the trainers. They had completed training in business skills and ‘training for trainers’ from our project partner Traidcraft, and they had also developed a comprehensive training manual that is specific to Rwandan small to medium sized enterprises and will be used throughout the three years of the project and beyond.

There were representatives from the Rwandan Private Sector Federation, the chamber of arts and crafts, RWAFAT (Rwandan Federation for Alternative Trade) and many other NGOs that had come along to hear more about our project – not to mention the national press and TV station! This was a real celebration.

One of the trainers, Yves, said in his speech: “This is the beginning for us to put into practice what we have learnt, we will train all of the 50 producer organisations and help them to change their businesses for the better, to make more profit, to run more efficiently and to make a difference to the lives of their co-operative members and workers. This is the beginning and we will see it through to the end.”

Related Articles

Namayiana - Fair Trade Producer Visit Click here to learn how you can invest in fair trade.

Click here to donate to the Shared Interest Foundation 		Mexican coffee farmer at work in the fields


EmailBookmark and Share



Fairtrade in Amsterdam

1

I’ve just returned to work after an interrailing holiday round Europe. One of my stops was Holland, home to Max Havelaar, a Dutch fairtrade company. Max Havelaar was the first initiative,  under the development agency Solidaridad, to launch a fairtrade label back in 1988. For more information see http://www.maxhavelaar.ch/en

Anyone planning a visit to Amsterdam could follow in my footsteps by calling into a great little supermarket called Marqt (see http://www.marqt.com/) then strolling along to the Vondelpark for a picnic.

Related Articles

Namayiana - Fair Trade Producer Visit Click here to learn how you can invest in fair trade.

Click here to donate to the Shared Interest Foundation 		Mexican coffee farmer at work in the fields


EmailBookmark and Share



Fairtrade Customer Spotlight – Cocagi Coffee Cooperative

1

Another coffee co-operative in Rwanda, the third in nine months, has started to use Shared Interest’s export credit facilities, a demonstration of Shared Interest’s growing reputation in that country.

COCAGI is located in the Gishoma district of western Rwanda (the name stands for Co-operative des caféculteurs de Gishoma). It started with just 22 members in 2003 and now has 684, all smallholder coffee growers each with a share worth equivalent to five US dollars. COCAGI buys coffee cherries from its members and processes them. About 84% is exported and the remainder is sold on the domestic market. COCAGI has been Fairtrade certified since May 2005.

COCAGI’s two main customers are not fair trade organisations and do not make advance payments. The farmers will not, or cannot afford to, deliver their harvest to the co-operative and so COCAGI has to borrow to pay them. Until now COCAGI has been borrowing from a local bank but this is a difficult and lengthy process. Other buyers take advantage of this situation and buy the harvest from COCAGI’s members for cash, but at a lower price. Shared Interest’s export credit facility should solve this problem, which would only have got worse because COCAGI is forecasting a 59% increase in export sales this year.

Related Articles

Namayiana - Fair Trade Producer Visit Click here to learn how you can invest in fair trade.

Click here to donate to the Shared Interest Foundation 		Mexican coffee farmer at work in the fields


EmailBookmark and Share