Equal Exchange has created Big Change for over 20 years. It all started with an idea: what if food could be traded in a way that is honest and fair, a way that empowers both farmers and consumers? What if trade supported family farms that use organic methods, rather than industrialized agribusinesses that rely on harmful chemicals?

Our founders – Rink Dickinson, Jonathan Rosenthal and Michael Rozyne – asked these questions as they envisioned a trade model that values the farmers, consumers and the earth. So they took a big risk and plunged full-force into changing a broken food system. In 1986, they started with fairly traded coffee from Nicaragua and didn’t look back. Read more about our story.

Today, Equal Exchange continues to find new and powerful ways to build a better food system. Our products now include fairly traded and organic coffee, tea, chocolate and snacks from farmers all over the world, including here in the United States.

Our worker-owned co-op is based in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Because Equal Exchange was founded with democratic principles in mind, we strongly believe in a one-person, one-vote workplace without a corporate hierarchy. We partner with co-operatives of small-scale farmers who make their own decisions on business and community matters.

From the farmers’ co-ops to our co-op, we’re providing the best-tasting foods - while also making Big Changes to the way food ends up on your table. We’ll keep the ideas coming.

Our Mission

Equal Exchange's mission is to build long-term trade partnerships that are economically just and environmentally sound, to foster mutually beneficial relationships between farmers and consumers and to demonstrate, through our success, the contribution of worker co-operatives and Fair Trade to a more equitable, democratic and sustainable world.

Our Guiding Principles

• Trade directly with democratically organized small farmer cooperatives.
• Facilitate access to credit for producer organizations.
• Pay producers a guaranteed minimum price that provides a stable source of income as well as improved social services.
• Provide high quality food products.
• Support sustainable farming practices.
• Build a democratically-run cooperative workplace.
• Develop more environmentally-sound business practices.

Our Vision

In June 2006, Equal Exchange's worker-owners approved a powerful vision for Equal Exchange's next 20 years:

A Vision for Equal Exchange

There will be...
A vibrant mutually cooperative community
of two million committed participants
trading fairly one billion dollars a year
in a way that transforms the world.

Vivid Description of the Vision Realized

Our vision is to create and foster a deep and far reaching cooperative model, with Equal Exchange serving as the engine of a complex economic network of two million producers, workers, investors, merchants, activists, and consumers who are using their land, labor, capital and votes to create the world they want to live in and leave for their children.

Participants work together in an effective global network of mutually beneficial trade that supports and extends sustainable agriculture, transforms relationships among people, and once again transforms national and international trade.

People in this web participate knowingly and value the contributions made by other participants. For this diverse, committed community, these economic transactions serve as a source of hope.

This extended Equal Exchange network fosters cooperative development. It does so through: new lines of fairly traded products; broader economic participation by stakeholders; and the development of new entities and organizational relationships. The network’s products and services touch the lives of consumers on a daily basis.

Activist consumers function as movement ambassadors, thinking, questioning, and challenging the status quo. They teach new economic models, take action, win elections, and build something new while challenging the old. To strengthen communities and reduce poverty they support grassroots development by extending opportunities to small business owners and small-scale producers worldwide.

Equal Exchange continues to set an example as a world leader in fairness, ethical commerce, and economic democracy.