Most mango farmers in Haiti have a couple of trees, but as illustrated in the podcast from the previous post, there just isn't enough profit to help them expand their production. What they need is pretty simple like washing stations, irrigation, and plastic bins to keep the harvested mangoes from being bruised.
A huge fan of fair trade, I came across TransFair mangoes. TransFair USA has teamed up with Whole Foods to get those Haitian mangoes certified. By helping these farmers sell their goods "fair trade," those mangoes sell at a premium in exchange for organic, higher quality fruit (just like fair trade coffee), which helps to buffer the prices against volatile markets. Additionally, those farmers are able to organize themselves into democratic co-ops, essentially cutting out the middle-men. (No need to worry about those guys though, they usually get absorbed into the chain some other way, often even becoming farmers themselves).
In the end, the farmers benefit by having more funding to improve their business, the communities benefit through projects created from the premiums like new clinics or schools, and the consumers in the US benefit with higher quality goods and more importantly, knowing where our products come from.
Sometime in the near future, I'll definitely devote a whole post to what fair trade is (not free trade, that's something very different). In the meantime, a photo of just-harvested Haitian mangoes from TransFair USA:
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment