source: Equal Exchange
Equal Exchange, an alternative trade organization (ATO) and the first fair trade coffee company in the US, was pleased to host IRTF board members who traveled to Massachusetts in June when we hosted out eighth annual Summit. This year, the energy was palpable and the room was full! It was a powerful reminder that we are at a turning point in our mission to build a truly democratic brand and foster meaningful participation in our food system.
These gatherings are core to the work we are doing with the People-Consumer community here at Equal Exchange. In a world where democracy is under threat, our work is more important now than ever before. Equal Exchange extends a special thanks to all the presenters and to the keynote speaker, Austin Frerick. Austin is the author of the book Barons: Money, Power & Corruption of America’s Food Industry. Consolidation of power in our food system threatens the future of independent food and has been a cornerstone topic in our organizing work. Austin’s book and keynote grounded the group and set us up for more in-depth conversations with all of our amazing presenters.
Sessions covered a gamut of topics, from Equal Exchange’s alternative capital and governance model to our work with farmers and consumers.
We had long-term partners of Equal Exchange fly in from across the world to talk about our olive oil programs, the future of organic food, the food co-op movement, and how we can continue to organize ourselves and apply past successes to our current political and economic context.
We also dove into the emerging work we’re doing to implement a Small Farmer Fund to help close the gap on development funding lost during the recent gutting of USAID.
Equal Exchange has a long history of working with small farmer cooperatives outside of our traditional role as a buyer. We support and implement a number of projects and grant programs alongside our commercial activities that invest in the long-term resilience of the farmer co-ops we buy from. Farmers face unprecedented challenges, and in order to fund essential development work, we now need added support from our community. We talked about how, with the help of all of you, we can keep these farmer-led projects that are core to the Equal Exchange mission, alive.
Please consider donating to our Small Farmer Fund. 100% of your donation—large or small—goes directly to our co-op development projects, which offer much-needed support to farmers as they continue to navigate the intensifying challenges of being a small producer in the global marketplace.
Is there anything you would like to see at a future Summit? Please reply to us; we want to hear from you! Is there anything that prevented you from attending this year? We want to hear that too. The future of our food depends on organizations like Equal Exchange to persist despite our challenging climate. If you have been waiting for a sign to get involved, this is it! Want to learn more about our community? Join us here.
Chat soon,
Equal Exchange Organizing Team
