Distributor Helps spud! Take Fair Trade to Whole New Level

One of our key produce distributors, Discovery Organics, has helped us score a huge win for the fair trade movement by creating the opportunity for spud! to carry Bananeros Organicos Solidarios certified organic, fair trade certified Bananas in most of our locations. I am thrilled about this because it has long been my hope that by getting to a larger size we could have more environmental and social impact than if we stayed small.

Discovery Organics is owned by two amazing people, Annie Moss and Randy Hooper. I have known Randy Hooper since before I started spud! Back then, Randy was an organic farmer with 6.5 acres of growing land and a small natural foods trading business. Shortly after I started spud! I met up with Randy and learned that he had fallen on hard times. He has allowed me to share with you that he had expanded his business to include an organic restaurant which proved very difficult to run because he became quite ill and his marriage to his first wife had fallen apart. The end result was that he had to give up the farm, the natural foods business, the restaurant AND his wife all in one fell swoop. Fortunately, at least he got his health back.

But Randy is such an entrepreneur that in no time he had dreamed up a new career… and found a new partner (Annie) who is as passionate as he is about local, sustainable agriculture. Their plan was to set up an organic produce distribution business that would only source from local, certified organic growers. The idea made good sense to me because I was experiencing the consequences of NOT having someone like Randy and Annie to coordinate local growers.

When I started spud! (back then we called ourselves “small potatoes”) I naively told local farmers that we were determined to buy more locally than any other grocery retailer and that “if they grew it, we would buy it.” It was all very exciting until one day three different farmers arrived at our warehouse with three separate loads of zucchini. Alas, we only had orders enough for one load.

Randy and Annie completely took care of this problem. They went out and worked with the local growers to coordinate their plantings so that the full range of crops were planted and the planting times were staggered to provide a steady flow of produce at harvest time with no oversupply. Together we dramatically expanded the amount of local, organic food production and soon Discovery Organics was a full scale organic distributor with many customers.

A number of their customers didn’t like the fact that Discovery Organics didn’t carry tropical produce items so Randy and Annie reluctantly began carrying imported produce like Bananas, Pineapples, and so on. However, they really wanted to make sure they were only dealing with truly dedicated, small, independent farms instead of just going with the “big guys.” So Randy began taking trips down to Mexico and South America to identify those growers who had the most environmentally and socially responsible practices.

One of the organizations he came across is a fabulous cooperative called Bananeros Organicos Solidarios or BOS (Organic Banana Producers in Solidarity). It was started in 2003 to coordinate small, organic banana farmers in a remote region of Peru. The cooperative now has almost 400 producers who grow organic, fair trade bananas on 326 hectares of land (that’s about two city blocks each!). They support their community in a number of important ways, including:

- A health fund that covers 80% of health insurance costs and provides health awareness programs;
- An education fund that provides school materials and scholarships for the growers’ children;
- A soil testing service and organic fertilizer co-op buying program that reduces fertilizer costs by 30%;
-A loan program that gives them lower interest rates and access to small loans to buy fertilizer and tools; and
-Training and internship programs to learn about organic production techniques.

After reading their website I assumed that the fair trade premium was providing the funding for these programs. However, Randy told me that is not the case. You see, when they started the cooperative they didn’t have a market for their bananas so they agreed to a long term contract with a multinational who markets their bananas as organic but not as fair trade. This means they haven’t been getting the $1 premium per banana box that they would get as a fair trade grower.

This really bothers Randy, who just completed another visit to the cooperative and is more impressed than ever about the depth of their commitment to improve the lives of their members and to do so in an environmentally responsible manner. We buy our bananas through different distributors in each location but because of Randy’s efforts, we have been able to get most of our distributors to start carrying these “super fair trade” bananas. Hopefully, we can offer them in all locations soon.

These recent direct shipments of bananas arranged by Randy and Annie represent the first direct sales ever made by the cooperative (ie. without going through a multinational intermediary). They include not only the $1 per box fair trade premimum but also an extra $1 per box for the special programs listed above, something this small grower cooperative has sought for years.

Randy tells me that each container (he is buying 3 containers a week) adds several thousand dollars of extra income to the cooperative and dramatically changes the economy of the region and the financial well-being of the member growers. As the average family income in that region is less than $2,000 per year, these fair trade premimums can increase their household income by 50% in one year!

Annie, who is also deeply committed to this program, feels strongly that a farm family that shops for food in Northern Peru should have the financial ability to make the same healthy choices as we North Americans do when we buy those bananas. The power is literally in our pockets!

Even more exciting for us – AND YOU, is that because Discovery Organics is buying their bananas direct and avoiding middle-agents, we can offer these certified organic, fair trade certified bananas at a lower price than non-fair trade organic bananas. It is a win-win situation for everyone involved.

And Randy and Annie aren’t stopping there. They’re now taking their direct buying program to other farms and cooperatives across latin america. You will be the beneficiaries as we slowly increase the proportion of fair trade produce in our weekly produce selection. I feel truly proud and grateful to be associated with these two dedicated individuals who are creating such a huge social impact for low income farm families to the south of us.