Madison I took one wrong turn and ended up on the wrong side of the track waiting for a train, which only heightened my anticipation at what the Just Coffee Cooperative of coffee roasters might be like. From across the tracks the street seemed to be smaller multi-unit apartments nicely appointed running down a row. Finally [...]
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New Orleans The ineffective anarchy of FLO certification through the various national fair trade organizations (though not the USA, since ours has disaffiliated, further weakening the standards) is crumbling before my eyes based on their own inability to change and the constant assault by both major corporations on one hand, who assert that they can do [...] Sorting at RAOS Marcala Thanks to our friends at the small women’s coffee and aloe vera cooperative, COMUCAP, we usually stay at their cabinas high in the mountains. There’s no water or electricity, but the setting is beautiful and the bunks work fine for us. They hope someday eco-tourism will come their way, who knows? We [...] Paterno I had been to Paolo Guarnaccia’s family farm in 2009 when a group of us had dinner with his family while talking about the Simeto Valley. Now I saw it differently as we joined his wife for a simple and delicious lunch there. I had not fully realized that the farm was still in Paterno, [...] New Orleans Part of the global dispute that ACORN International highlighted in our recently released report, “Unfair Fairtrade” www.acorninternational.org, burst into the business section of the Times in a weird piece of Thanksgiving celebration. The issue engaged most directly continued to be the rouge retreat of Fair Trade USA and its chief, Paul Rice, from [...] New Orleans Any “protest” that has too many names is bound to be questionable, and that seems the case with some of the efforts to direct consumer consumption along political paths. Among the assortment I saw recently in a piece by Anand Giridharadas in the Times: “boycotting,” ethical consumerism, moral economics, latte activism, critical [...] |
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