Building a Model for Domestic Fair Trade
Since 1986, Equal Exchange has been building Fair Trade around the world, partnering with small farmer co-operatives to bring you delicious fairly traded coffee, tea and chocolate from marginalized countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia. As a co-operative Fair Trade Organization passionate about finding new ways to accomplish our mission, we’re always on the look-out for new ways to bring consumers, workers and farmers together to build a more sustainable, democratic and economically just food system. Along the way, many of our customers have asked what we can do to partner with small farmers here in our own backyard. Coincidentally, we’ve been asking ourselves the very same question.
As our food system has become more globalized and its control more concentrated among an ever-shrinking list of large corporations, family farmers here in North America face challenges that are similar in many ways to those of farmers in the developing world. Indeed, farmers around the globe are caught between declining prices for their products, the consolidation of markets and distribution, and tightening control over inputs such as seed. For example, 50 years ago farmers in Europe and North America received between 45 and 60 percent of the money that consumers spent on food. Today that proportion has dropped to just 7 percent in Britain and 3.5 percent in the US. And between 1935 and 1997, the total number of farms in the U.S. fell from 6.5 million to just 2.05 million. By 2003, there were just 1.9 million working farmers in the U.S. — less than the prison population. In terms of market consolidation, over 50% of the revenue generated globally by food retailing can be accounted for by just 10 corporations.
At Equal Exchange, we are extending our vision, seeking ways to partner with small farmer co-ops, consumers and retailers here in North America to build a vision for a more socially just, participatory and sustainable economic system that includes the global, domestic and local levels. For example, in 2005, Equal Exchange was a founding member of the Domestic Fair Trade Working Group, which brought together likeminded organizations from the U.S. and Canada to develop a set of "Principles for Domestic Fair Trade." You can download a copy of these principles here.
Principles for Domestic Fair Trade, English (PDF Format)
Principles for Domestic Fair Trade, Spanish (PDF Format)
Learn about our farmer partners in the U.S., Big Tree Organic Farms Co-op.
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Farmer Partners 
