Familiar with the Fair Trade Movement?
added 10/06/08
When you spend money on food, only a small percentage actually reaches the people who work hard to grow and produce the food itself, but the Fair Trade movement makes a difference. October is not only Co-op Month, but Fair Trade month as well. What is Fair Trade? Think about it like this: Particularly in developing countries, many food producers labor for long hours on small plots of land far removed from markets—especially if those markets are in the West. The Fair Trade movement shortens the path from farm to table, reducing the amount of high-priced middlemen in-between and providing a living wage for the farmer. Fair Trade started with individual companies called Alternative Trade Organizations (ATOs), who made a commitment to work directly with indigenous peoples and to market their products directly to consumers.
Jamie King
What do you get when you take a chef’s certification, a master’s degree, a beautiful singing voice, a welcoming manner, and mix it all together?
Edgewater Farm
Plainfield, New Hampshire
The temperature is headed into the 90s, and the fruit is gently warm in the hands of the pickers. Before lunch on an average day in strawberry season, the folks at Edgewater Farm will harvest 800 quarts of strawberries, many of them for sale at the Co-op. Pooh and Anne Sprague have been raising strawberries along the shady banks of the Connecticut River since 1974. Over time, the operation grew to include other summer fruits and vegetables, as well as extensive greenhouses and pick-your-own.
