EZ'S FAIR TRADE BLOG
Meet Juan Valdez and his wife. They are standing outside their new home built with money they saved up from their Fair Trade coffee exporting business. Don't they look happy? Well, they should be happy because, formerly, they and their kids were living in a hut made from the plastic freshness caps Pringle's Chips snap on their familiar red or green cans. That's right, doohickeys that end up clogging landfills in the US might actually be a favored building material in the part of the world Juan lives. Nothing is wasted in Juan's world as well it shouldn't be.
Juan and Maria, and no stereotyping intended, Glenda or Britney doesn't happen to a popular name in Juan's culture. That's something we need to work on, don't we? Why shouldn't we be able to export the whole range of yuppie baby names the same way that Juan exports his coffee? Why couldn't kids in other parts of the world enjoy snappy first names like Ashley, Deidre, or even Tracy and Joshua? You never think of that shit, do you? You probably never really think about what's behind the whole Fair Trade charade either?
Here's a quote taken from a website created by the guy who supplies coffee beans to Autumn Leaves, the popular cafe in Ithaca, New York, progressive community USA. Dean is talking about the hilly country in Papua- New Guinea.
"Coffee is the only cash crop in the Highlands. The people grow all of their own food, using the coffee money to buy cooking oil, sugar, used clothes and other necessaries. They depulp the cherries by hand using round rocks. This is the only place in the world where coffee is depulped this way. It is a family affair, and I visit with several families singing and depulping by the river. After sun drying the beans, the villagers have to carry the sixty pound sacks on their backs for up to twenty miles, over mountains, through rivers via rocky paths. Historically, they would sell their beans to a number of middlemen who wait by the only road, giving the farmers pennies for their labor. But we are here to change that. We are here to work with several farmer associations to create legally recognized cooperatives, and to create more direct trade relationships that should
increase the farmers income fourfold, as well as increase sales"
The italics are Ez's. Do the math. If coffee middlemen formerly paid the growers pennies for growing and hauling the shit from the mountains, and Dean now pays them fourfold, what does that amount to?
Ok. Imagine if a group of enlightened Ithacans organized a fair trade convention in Ithaca, ok, stay with Ez on this, and invited representatives from Starbucks, other fair trade capitalists and a few producer types like Juan, who would be staying at the Hilton and who would be staying at the Red Cross Shelter? Who would be eating at Madelines and who would be dining at Loaves & Fishes?
Would Juan, on a visit to Ithaca, oh, big city lights, skyscrapers, headshops, neon roosters, fair trade mecca, be able to afford a latte from Starbucks? That's a week's grocery money if you work for Dean.
By the way, here's a pic of Britney coming out of Starbucks -- not in Ithaca but she might have to start playing venues like the Haunt if her career goes on like it has. That's a whole other blog, baby.
Do you think Britney cares about fair trade? Now, come'on, does Starbucks?
Oh, by the way, do people ever ask themselves where from or who makes all the products that line the walls of the dollar store? Do you think artisans in Vermont craft those cute plastic Disney character straws? Do you?
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 2:07 AM
