{"id":35083,"date":"2022-05-24T20:03:39","date_gmt":"2022-05-25T00:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/?p=35083"},"modified":"2023-07-08T18:59:18","modified_gmt":"2023-07-08T22:59:18","slug":"equal-exchange-a-mission-accomplished","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/equal-exchange-a-mission-accomplished\/","title":{"rendered":"Equal Exchange: A Mission Accomplished"},"content":{"rendered":"
>> Back to June 2023 Issue<\/a><\/div>\n
\"Ted
Ted Ketcham, GreenMoney editor<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was a fortuitous sharing of vision and willingness to take risks that drove Equal Exchange founders Rink Dickinson, Jonathan Rosenthal, and Michael Rozyne in 1986 to move forward with their vision of Fair Trade and a better world. The three were managers at a food cooperative in New England who dreamed of a large and inclusive economy that lifted up the prosperity of growers in the Third World \u2014 growers whose poorly paid labor had long kept the wealthy in comfort and the growers in poverty.<\/p>\n

Meeting once a week for three years to discuss how best to change the way food is grown, bought, and sold around the world, they hatched a plan for a new organization to be called Equal Exchange that would be:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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  • A social change organization that would help farmers and their families gain more control over their economic futures.<\/li>\n
  • A group that would educate consumers about trade issues affecting farmers.<\/li>\n
  • A provider of high-quality foods that would nourish the body and the soul.<\/li>\n
  • A company that would be controlled by the people who did the actual work.<\/li>\n
  • A community of dedicated individuals who believed that honesty, respect, and mutual benefit are integral to any worthwhile endeavor.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    They launched an alternative trade model that utilized direct trade, established long term contracts, and offered higher-than-market prices to small coffee farmers. In the traditional trade model, buyers go through a series of middlemen to purchase coffee beans from plantation farmers. Prices are determined by these middlemen.<\/p>\n

    They left their jobs. They invested their own money, and they turned to their families and friends for start-up funds and let them know there was a good chance they would never see that money again.<\/p>\n

    \"EqualThe idea of Fair Trade, as practiced by Equal Exchange, was to establish direct relationships between growers and buyers, betting that consumers would support the cooperatives by paying a little extra for higher quality coffee. The profits were shared equally.<\/p>\n

    Today, while they are a much larger organization with more than 100 worker-owners and a significant national and international scale, they are still breaking conventions when they buy from their trade partners in organic, gourmet coffee, tea, sugar, bananas, avocados, cocoa, and chocolate bars and olive oils produced by farmer cooperatives in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.<\/p>\n

    Encouraged by Equal Exchange\u2019s Fair Trade success, other producers have succeeded on a similar scale. Fair Trade foods that were once limited to local markets and expensive groceries are now distributed in Walmart, Kroger and Publix, among many other retailers. For many years consumers perceived the fair trade movement as existing primarily for middle or upper-class consumers in large cities, but that image is changing.<\/p>\n

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