Decisions About Man and Land
by Kelsey Timmerman
—Excerpt from Where Am I Eating? My Adventure Through the Global Food Economy

I give thanks for the food about to nourish my body and to the hands that prepared the food I’m about to eat . . . wherever in the world they are.
—Where Am I Eating? (p. 268)

It’s amazing how often a discussion of food leads to a discussion of family. Annie and I used our family as an excuse to justify the way we’ve always eaten: We have two young kids and don’t have enough time so we need something quick. We need to save money so we can save for the kids’ college.

I’ve come to realize that we shouldn’t use our family as an excuse to justify eating poorly, but as a reason for eating healthier and more justly. How we eat impacts the futures of our children and the futures of farmers’ children around the world. That’s why we eat organic when possible. It’s good for us and it’s better for the farm workers. That’s why we’re trying to eat food that respects the land and people equally. I love my kids as much as Michael in Ivory Coast loves his, and because I know this, and because not eating chocolate is not an option, I need to find ways to support cocoa farmers like Michael with my purchases.

Fair trade, in its various forms, is part of the answer.

‘‘If we can get people to understand that something as simple as a banana or cup of coffee or a chocolate bar can change people’s lives,’’ Paul Rice, President of Fair Trade USA told me when I visited their headquarters in Oakland, ‘‘then we’re really onto something.’’

After Paul told me that, he rushed off to meet with some farmers. The office was filled with passionate employees who had travelled all over the earth, including Katie, with whom I had travelled in Colombia to meet the Arhuaco. The office buzzed with exciting ideas like allowing farm and factory workers to register complaints and rate their working environments through surveys on their cell phones. This would give workers a voice and allow brands that source from these farms and factories an on-the-ground look at the working conditions.

You already support fair trade more than you know. Two separate sources confirmed that one of the world’s biggest fast food joints buys 30 percent of their coffee certified Fair Trade. That’s 22 percent more than Starbucks. Yet here’s the problem: no one knows this or can talk about it publicly because the company is worried that they’ll get criticized for not sourcing the other 70 percent fair trade. Consumers need to be part of the solution and not the problem.

Fair trade shouldn’t need a special distinction from other types of trade, it should just be the way all trade happens: transparency of supply chains, environmental and social standards, and trading relationships in which all benefit. That’s all that Michael in the Ivory Coast, Felipe in Colombia, and Juan in Costa Rica are asking for. They don’t want any special treatment. They just want to work and support their families.

Rainforest Alliance, USDA Certified Organic, and Fair for Life, are other labels to look for. The different certifiers out there all have their own focuses, and sometimes get in disagreements with one another, but they are all working to empower and educate the consumers and make sure man and land are being looked after. I’ve included a breakdown of these labels in Appendix A to help highlight these differences.

There are more than 7,500 fair trade products, including rice, quinoa, chocolate, and bananas, sold at more than 100,000 retailers across the country. Most grocery stores will at least have Fair-Trade-Certified coffee. Look for brands like Green Mountain Coffee (www.greenmountaincoffee.com), Equal Exchange (www.equalexchange.coop), and Alter-Eco Foods (www.alterecofoods.com).

Fair trade products may cost more, but I guarantee that a bag of fair trade coffee beans will be much cheaper than buying a grande cup of joe at your local cafe every day. But a lot of cafes are carrying certified coffee these days, too. If yours does, tell them that you appreciate it. If the café or your grocery store doesn’t, encourage them to do so.

Do more than just buy certified products. Learn the stories of those products. Something with a story always tastes better, whether it’s my neighbor John’s tomatoes or coffee grown near the Arhuacan capitol of Nabusimaque. I just discovered fair trade, organic guayusa tea from Ecuador sold by two brands Runa (http://runa.org) and Stash (www.stashtea.com). It’s harvested by indigenous Amazonians who believe that drinking it is essential to making them fully alive. I have to agree.

However, we simply aren’t going to shop our way to a better world. Buying socially and environmentally certified products is better than not doing so, but if all we do is look at a certification label and feel like we’re doing our part, that’s not enough.

We need to look beyond the labels, even the fair trade labels. We need to eat locally, even when we’re eating globally. What I mean by that is that we need to shop as if when we buy that coffee from Colombia or banana from Costa Rica that we’re buying it as if we’re at a farmers market, as if it’s being handed to us by the farmers. We need to make the effort to know not just our local farmers, but our global farmers, too, and about the issues impacting their lives. Many of the certification agencies and brands do this on their websites. Some of them even sponsor farmer visits. To keep up to date on issues impacting the lives of farmers, the following groups are worth following: La Via Campesina (www.viacampesina.org), International Labor Rights Forum (www.laborrights.org), Slow Food (www.slowfoodusa.com), and Food First (www.foodfirst.org).

Excerpted with permission from the publisher, Wiley, from Where Am I Eating? by Kelsey Timmerman. Copyright © 2013. (www.wiley.com, 1-800-762-2974, 416-236-4433).