World Fair Trade Day 2008

Yesterday, trade justice activists worldwide advocated the importance of fair trade products. The benefits of fair trade food generally mean healthier, organic alternatives to conventional foods loaded with man-made pesticides, carcinogens and who knows what else. In recent years it has become trendy to go to the local Whole Foods and purchase anything that is organic with a black and white fair trade stamp of approval on it.

However, with the recent surge in world food prices, more people with limited disposable income are choosing to spend their money on conventional foods, to the dismay of organic food producers.

From Newsweek:

Organic foods face the same pressures that have driven up the cost of plain old white bread 16.3 percent this year. Energy and commodity prices, along with
corn farmers' gold rush into ethanol (feeding our tanks instead of our tummies),
are sending the grocery bill skyward. Organics' growth and premium prices once
persuaded farmers to go through the costly three-year process to cleanse their
fields of chemicals to become USDA-certified as a green grower. But now with
corn, grain and soybeans at record prices, the financial incentive is to grow
conventionally. The rising price of organic grain is making it tough to feed all
those free-range chickens and synthetic-hormone-free cows. Some organic farmers
in the Northeast are even converting back to chemically enhanced crops to boost
the bottom line. Fewer organic farmers means higher prices and less variety on
greengrocers' shelves. "Organics is becoming the private school of food," says
Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, which tracks
organic-food production. "It's great if you can afford it. But pricing it out of
people's reach is not a strategy for expansion."

I was happy, though, to read in Thursday's New York Times about inner city residents taking charge of not only growing their own food, but also making a killing at the market with their homegrown products are sold.

From The New York Times:

...This urban agriculture movement has grown even more vigorously
elsewhere. Hundreds of farmers are at work in Detroit, Milwaukee, Oakland and
other areas that, like East New York, have low-income residents, high rates of
obesity and diabetes, limited sources of fresh produce and available,
undeveloped land...

...Some operations have figured out how to make real money.

On a fringe of Philadelphia, a nonprofit demonstration project
used densely planted rows in a half-acre plot and generated $67,000 from
high-value crops like lettuces, carrots and radishes.

In Milwaukee, the nonprofit Growing Power operates a one-acre farm crammed
with plastic greenhouses, compost piles, do-it-yourself contraptions, tilapia
tanks and pens full of hens, ducks and goats — and grossed over $220,000 last
year from the sale of lettuces, winter greens, sprouts and fish to local
restaurants and consumers.

One key to financial success is having customers with the wherewithal to
buy your goods. In New York, Bob Lewis, the head of the city office for the
state Department of Agriculture and Markets, helped make this happen by getting
21 farmers at 16 sites approved to accept checks from the Farmers’ Market
Nutrition Program, a supplement to the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and
senior nutrition programs.

Sarita Daftary, the program director for East New York Farms, estimates
that about 60 percent of the market’s gross revenue came from the farmers’
market checks. And by the end of this year, changes to WIC will give city
residents another $14 million specifically for fresh fruits and
vegetables.

Fair trade and sustenance farming rocks, y'all!