Imagine a world where the food we eat nourishes not only our bodies, but the land and seas around us. This is a world where farmers, fishers, and all those who work in fields, boats, packaging and distribution are paid fair wages and are afforded lives with dignity, lives free from racism, income inequality, and environmental destruction. This is a world where the ecosystems that produce our food are cared for wisely and not exploited.

Unfortunately, we’re far from that reality right now. The way our food is produced and distributed is directly linked to society’s most urgent problems of climate change, ecosystem degradation, income inequality, and racism. We live in a society where immigrants are abused in the fields; fishing communities are collapsing; Black farmers are systematically shut out of their local markets, and students either go hungry or have no choice but to eat overly processed foods in their schools.

The massive, multinational food and beverage corporations are responsible for these problems. These are the same Big Food companies who have rigged the food economy in their favor at the expense of people and the planet. Just like we have come to understand the problems with Big Oil and Big Tobacco, we also need to talk about the problems of Big Food and the power these consolidated industries wield.

A CAMPAIGN TO CHANGE THE FOOD SYSTEM

A national campaign launched this Fall is doing just that, taking an honest look at how our country feeds itself and focusing on the food service providers who choose what’s on the menu for so many people.

The Real Meals Campaign was launched by the Community Coalition for Real Meals, a coalition of farmers, fishers, ranchers, food workers, students, educators, and environmental advocates who recognize how better food is a solution to some of our biggest problems.

The Real Meals Campaign is about leveraging the massive food purchasing power of the three largest food service management companies that dominate the cafeteria market: Compass Group, Aramark, and Sodexo. We’re calling on these three companies to shift to a purchasing system that is fundamentally oriented toward Real Food and phases out a system of exclusive relationships with Big Food. Unfair business practices common to this industry lock in Big Food manufacturers like Tyson, Cargill, and Coca-Cola and lock out independent family farmers, ranchers, and fishers whose supply chains are based in fairness and sustainability.

The goal: to redirect approximately $800 million away from Big Food and towards food production that protects our environment and fairly compensates farmers, fishers, and workers. For context, the largest of these companies, Compass Group, earns over $20 billion each year in global revenue. That’s almost as big as McDonald’s globally. Together, these three companies control 83% of our food service market. This means they have tremendous amounts of buying power, and, therefore, a tremendous potential to be a force of positive change.

Drop Big Food, Invest in a Food System with a Future

Specifically, we are asking these three corporations to ensure that a minimum of 25% of their food is ecologically sound, fair, humane, local and community-based. This includes asking that they increase racial justice and equity by expanding their purchasing from historically underserved producers. Additionally, we ask that they do their part to fight climate change by reducing carbon emissions and factory-farmed meat purchases. This shift would collectively redirect approximately $800 million away from a system that extracts wealth and wellbeing from communities, and towards food production that protects our environment and fairly compensates family farmers, fishers, and workers.

But what is real food? Real food is a holistic term defined by the organization Real Food Challenge, a member of the Community Coalition for Real Meals, to describe food that “truly nourishes consumers, producers, communities, and the earth – all aspects of the food system.” The Community Coalition for Real Meals is a nine organization coalition including the Domestic Fair Trade Association, Fair World Project, Friends of the Earth, HEAL Food Alliance, the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, Operation Spring Plant, Organization for Competitive Markets, Public Justice, and Real Food Challenge. An additional 60 organizations have endorsed the campaign as well.

Support the Real Meals Campaign

The Coalition is well on its way to exceeding a goal of 100,000 petition signatures in early 2019. Please join us by visiting our website, RealMealsCampaign.org and sign the petition to send a strong message that these changes are urgent, important, and necessary. This coalition is about working together to change our food system, no matter where you fit into it – whether as a food producer, an eater, or somewhere else along the supply chain.

To learn more, sign the petition, and get involved, visit: RealMealsCampaign.org

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The post Real Meals, Not Dirty Deals: A National Coalition Calls for Food Justice appeared first on Fair World Project.

Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ) was born when migrant indigenous Mexican blueberry pickers refused to go into the fields of Sakuma Brothers Farms after one of them had been fired for asking for a wage increase. Workers then organized work stoppages for the next four years to raise their piece-rate wages. At the same time, they organized boycott committees in cities on the Pacific Coast to pressure Sakuma’s main customer, the giant berry distributor Driscoll’s Inc. In 2017, the farm’s owners agreed to an election, and the union won. Familias Unidas then negotiated a two-year contract with Sakuma Brothers Farms.

“We know this contract is going to change our lives,” says Ramon Torres, Familias Unidas president. “We have always been invisible people, but now our children will have the opportunity to keep studying. It is not that we want to get them out of the fields, but we want them to have an opportunity to decide what they want. Our members understand that we are not just farmworkers. We are part of a community.”

Since signing the contract, work stoppages have occurred on many nearby ranches. Most of those workers are also Mixtec and Triqui migrants from Oaxaca and Guerrero in southern Mexico, who now live permanently in rural Washington. Familias Unidas has been able to help workers in these spontaneous strikes. The piece rate for picking berries at Sakuma Brothers Farms has increased dramatically, with some workers earning as much as $30 per hour. Now farmworkers at other farms have taken action to raise their own wages.

“The wages on the other farms are much lower,” Torres explains. “So, our vision is to help form independent unions and negotiate contracts there also. Everything is led by the workers. The purpose is to grow the union, so that all of us have fair wages.”

Organizing Migrant Farmworkers for a Better Life

After winning its contract, Familias Unidas members organized the Cooperativa Tierra y Libertad. Rosalinda Guillen, director of Community2Community Development in Bellingham, helped workers form both the union and the cooperative. “Today, the production of food is based on how much profit a farmer or a corporation can make,” she charges. “Farmworkers are a cost. Growers do not invest in us because they do not believe we are worth it.”

But she believes the culture of indigenous farmworkers is a resource for developing sustainable agriculture. “Many migrants coming to the U.S. were farmers in Mexico and Central America. Because of trade agreements like NAFTA, they were displaced and moved north. Many are in the caravans and now in the detention centers in the U.S. But they know how to grow food with no chemicals, how to conserve water, how to take care of the land. We have to organize these farmers and see them as a resource because the corporate food system is poisoning the earth and the water. Farmworkers suffer illness from pesticides and broken bodies because of the pressure to work fast under bad conditions. The average lifespan of a farmworker is forty-nine years. Fourteen years ago, it was forty-seven years.”

A Cooperative Vision for Farming

In the eyes of Torres and the workers, the cooperative is an alternative for workers to the wage exploitation they have suffered since coming to the U.S. This cooperative uses the tradition of mutual help that is part of the indigenous culture of the workers themselves. “In the cooperative, we are educating workers,” he says. “We want to be an example. We do not need supervisors or managers. We do not need owners. We can be the owners – we just need land.”

Tierra y Libertad has just signed an agreement to purchase sixty-five acres in Everson, in addition to the two acres it is already farming near Sumas. Twenty acres are planted in red raspberries, seven in blueberries and four in strawberries. In addition to the handful of founding members, five more families are being trained in the cooperative’s operations. Last year, it sold berries in community food cooperatives, stores on Kamano Island, local fruterias, and even in front of churches after services. When the harvest begins in the spring, they hope to expand to other areas as well.

“We want a system in which we can live and buy locally,” Torres says. “Where our gains stay here in the county. At the same time, we will compete with the corporations that have been making money from us.”

Farm Work is Skilled Work

Basic to the vision of both Familias Unidas and the cooperative is the idea that farm work is skilled, and it should provide a decent life and respect for those who do it. One of the biggest obstacles, however, is the growth of the H-2A visa program that treats immigrant farmworkers as temporary labor, contracted for the harvest and then sent back to Mexico once it is over.

Companies using the H-2A program must apply to the U.S. Department of Labor, listing the work, living conditions and wages workers will receive. The company must provide transportation and housing. Workers are given contracts for less than one year and must leave the country when their work is done. They can only work for the company that contracts them, and, if they lose that job, they must leave the country immediately.

In 2017, Washington growers were given H-2A visas for 18,796 workers, about 12,000 of whom were recruited by the Washington Farm Labor Association (WAFLA). In 2017, about 200,000 H-2A workers were brought to the U.S., and in 2018, the number exceeded 242,000. “In the capitalist system, we are disposable and easily replaceable,” Guillen says. “The guest worker program is a good example. You bring people in and ship them out and make money off of them. It is time to end that. We are human beings, and we are part of the community.”

In the summer of 2017, seventy H-2A workers refused to work at Sarbanand Farms in Sumas, after one of their fellow workers collapsed in the field and later died. The strikers were then deported because workers with these visas have no right to strike. “The impact of this system on the ability of farmworkers to organize is disastrous,” Guillen charges. Workers faced replacement at Sakuma Brothers Farms as well before the union contract was negotiated.

Meeting Transnational Corporations with Cross-Border Solidarity

The flow of workers is not the only cross-border issue facing Washington farmworkers. Recently, two leaders of the new independent union for agricultural laborers in Baja, California’s San Quintín Valley visited Familias Unidas and the new cooperative. “Workers in Mexico and the U.S. work for the same companies, like Driscoll’s,” says Lorenzo Rodriguez, the General Secretary of the National Independent Democratic Union of Farmworkers (SINDJA). “It is important to form alliances with the workers of different countries. That is the only way we can face the companies. They are all coordinated. We must cooperate also.”

Adds Abelina Ramirez, SINDJA’s Secretary for Gender Equality, “Regardless of what country we live in, we have basic rights to education, to health care, and to the welfare of our children. If we unite and organize, we can win these rights.”

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The post Land and Liberty: How Migrant Farmworkers Are Organizing for a Better Future appeared first on Fair World Project.

We take rice for granted. It is a cheap starch available in diverse forms in our supermarkets, ranging from rice that cooks in one minute to prized heirloom varieties. By now, most people are aware that rice is not just white. It can be brown, red or black.

However, because U.S. consumption patterns are traditionally more wheat-based than rice-based, few consumers know how rice is produced except that it is grown with lots of water. The reality is that current rice production methods are at the root of serious environmental and social crises.

Worldwide, most fresh water withdrawals are for agriculture, and the lion’s share of that water goes to irrigate rice. With the global population on track to add two billion people by 2050, the amount of water used for agriculture is expected to increase further, creating intense competition from domestic, energy, and industrial sectors. And this comes at a time when major rice-producing nations are suffering from increasing water scarcity.

Flooded rice fields are also a major contributor to global warming. When soils are continuously covered in water and deprived of oxygen, they release methane gas which is a more powerful greenhouse gas in the short term than carbon dioxide.

WOMEN PLAY A MAJOR ROLE IN RICE PRODUCTION

Rice production has a huge, often overlooked, impact on women. The labor to produce most of the global rice crop, which feeds half of the world’s population, is provided by women under conditions that most of us could not tolerate for more than one hour, let alone a lifetime.

It is estimated that about half a billion women are engaged in rice farming. They simultaneously shoulder household, farm production and community responsibilities. They work mostly barefoot, using their hands and various small tools that have changed little over the centuries. They bend over in backbreaking postures in hot, humid and wet conditions with their hands and feet immersed in water for long hours over many days. Women’s work is often unpaid, usually unrecognized, and taken for granted by researchers and policymakers. Rarely is any investment made to improve women’s working conditions by providing better technologies and resources. Instead, billions of dollars are spent on improving rice productivity through developing new varieties and applying agrochemical inputs, assuming the availability of cheap or unpaid female labor. Yet, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, providing more and better resources to women could increase food production and reduce hunger among 100-150 million people.

MORE CROP PER DROP: A NEW APPROACH TO GROWING RICE

The good news is that there are solutions, like the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), which we have dubbed “More Crop Per Drop,” so that consumers better understand what it is all about – essentially producing more rice with less water. What is SRI? SRI is an agroecological rice-growing method that enables farmers to produce more productive rice plants through optimum management of water, soils and inputs. It can enhance the yield of any variety, from heirloom varietals to the latest hybrids, from 25% to more than 100%, which translates directly into improved household food security and income.

SRI practices involve planting younger seedlings further apart to reduce competition among plants; doing frequent weeding; maintaining non-flooded moist field soil conditions to promote soil microorganisms and root growth; and relying mostly or only on organic inputs. These practices are dramatically different from how farmers have been advised to grow rice over the last sixty years, which emphasizes using new seeds, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, and constant irrigation.

BETTER FOR WOMEN, BETTER FOR THE CLIMATE

These changes not only reduce the use of water by 25-50% and cut methane emissions by about 40%, but they also fundamentally alter the working conditions for women rice farmers. With 80-90% fewer and lighter seedlings to transport and transplant, their burden is drastically reduced. A simple mechanical weeder enables them to weed standing upright rather than constantly bent over, and since it is a mechanical tool, often men take over that onerous task. Most importantly, they no longer have to work in standing water, reducing their exposure to parasites, chemicals and water-borne diseases. Sabarmatee, our colleague in Odisha, India, which has done pioneering research into the impact of SRI on women’s bodies as compared with conventional methods, has estimated that SRI can reduce the labor of women by as much as 380 hours per acre, or forty-seven eight-hour days!

What we have learned from formal and informal interviews with women in our supply chains who have adopted SRI is that women are able to spend less time in the fields and can work when the sun is not so hot. They say they have more time to take care of their children and their homes, they have less muscle pains and fewer infections because their hands and legs are not constantly immersed in muddy water, and thus they are spending less on medical bills. And they feel generally healthier eating rice grown without chemicals. Some even have time to start small entrepreneurial enterprises or focus on higher-value cash crops.

SUPPORTING SMALL-SCALE FARMERS IN BUILDING BETTER LIVES

Lotus Foods is proud to be a leader in working with families that have embraced SRI and in raising awareness about the social and environmental consequences of rice production. With climate change, and the high cost of inputs and credit, most smallholder rice farmers are barely able to make ends meet. But with the combination of higher yields from SRI and organic and fair trade premiums, we are helping the farmers from whom we source our rice to stay together, farm together, and improve their quality of life. We are hopeful that as more consumers become aware of these issues, they will request – even demand – that more vendors provide rice grown using this women-, water- and climate-smart method.

More information on SRI can be found at: LotusFoods.com, SRI4women.org and sri.cals.cornell.edu

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The post Changing How Rice is Grown Around the World appeared first on Fair World Project.

With growing inequality, entrenched poverty and a pending ecological crisis, it is time to revisit the central design feature of business and explore the alternatives that exist the world over.

Business was invented by humans. In order to employ humans, trade products and services, facilitate investments and foster production, we as societies designed business to meet human needs. We have a choice about what business looks like – its purpose, priorities, and structure. So, we do not need to accept that business must have a one-track mind, focused only on growing profits for shareholders.

The business world is diverse, but in most countries, it is dominated by businesses that exist primarily to grow the capital of their investors. This is especially the case for larger companies. In the past few decades, corporations have gone to an extreme end of the spectrum, where only one stakeholder group matters – the shareholder. In the 1970s, a typical corporation in the U.S. would return about 33% of its profits to shareholders. Today, it is 70%. The trend of increasingly channeling growing profits to shareholders is happening everywhere. From the UK to the U.S. to India, shareholder capitalism has become supercharged. This is central to the global story of rising inequality.

INEQUALITY HURTS AND BUSINESS IS DRIVING IT

Rising inequality destabilizes societies, democracies and economies, and it is hindering our fight to end global poverty (according to the World Bank). Since the turn of the century, the poorest half of the world’s population has received just 1% of the total increase in global wealth. Meanwhile, half of new wealth has gone to the richest 1%. By 2017, only eight men owned as much wealth as the world’s poorest 3.6 billion people combined. Inequality is rampant and has been getting worse. This is bad for all of us.

What does business have to do with this? Businesses populate our economies, channel investments and wages, and are pivotal to determining how the fruits of our economies are shared. For some time now, profits have grown, but real incomes have not. Economies are expanding, but farmers and workers are getting a decreasing share of the pie.  In the 1980s, a cocoa farmer would get about 18% of the value of a chocolate bar, while today that same farmer gets below 6%. Similar trends can be found across the board, as workers overall get a decreasing share of the global economy. In global supply chains, prices paid are failing to cover the costs of sustainable production in products from tea to t-shirts (as covered in the film, True Cost). These are the decisions of businesses to squeeze suppliers, grow margins and maximize profits. Most companies are doing what they are designed to do – extracting maximum returns for their shareholders. But this does not have to be the case.

“THE SHAREHOLDER REVOLUTION DEVOURS ITS CHILDREN”

Are not most people shareholders anyway, through their pension funds, for instance? And is it really so bad that corporations are increasingly obsessed with growing the wealth of their shareholders? Yes, this is a big problem. The majority of shares are owned by a small group of people. In the U.S., the richest 10% own 84% of shares. As so eloquently put by Mike Konczal in his article “The Shareholder Revolution Devours Its Children” in The Nation, “The economy has been rigged to channel wealth to a tiny elite” and “these shareholders are also probably not you.” Put another way, if we share the fruits of the economy based on the size of peoples’ wealth, we will make business obsessed with growing dividends, and the dividend checks to the richest will get exponentially larger and larger. If business is fixated on growing those dividend checks, they will squeeze their workers and suppliers, cut costs and think short-term. That is a scenario where we have designed business and the economy to drive up inequality. And that is exactly where we have ended up.

But there is hope. Businesses are emerging around the world that show it is possible to prioritize a broader range of stakeholders – and purposes – than just the wealth of shareholders. These range from employee and farmer ownership, to hybrid ownership structures and fair trade enterprises, to social enterprises and cooperatives.

BUSINESS OUTSIDE THE BOX

Let us start by looking beyond the fair trade movement. In the U.S., initiatives like Working World are supporting conversion of traditional businesses to worker cooperative models, from Arizona to the Bronx. Meanwhile, the B Corporation initiative has helped businesses broaden their agenda from a pure focus on profit maximization, spreading to over 2,600 companies around the world and encompassing major brands from Ben & Jerry’s to Eileen Fisher. In the UK, the John Lewis Partnership has redefined retail through a model where 83,000 workers co-own the successful department store chain with annual sales of over £11 billion. Farmer-owned processing in agriculture (such as KTDA tea in Kenya) and worker-ownership in heavy industry (such as Mondragon in Spain) are also bucking the trend and channeling more of the value generated by the business to their farmers and workers. Meanwhile, mission-led businesses like Fairphone are demonstrating that business governance models can be shaped to prioritize a mission other than profit maximization.

These are not businesses making every decision based on the pursuit of forever-growing profits. Instead, they are businesses that focus on balancing a social mission with achieving commercial viability. They are not confining themselves to doing good only when it is the path to greatest shareholder wealth.

FAIR TRADE ENTERPRISES: A FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT POWER RELATIONSHIP

The fair trade movement is full of business models that are designed to prioritize the interests of workers, farmers, artisans and communities. The organization I lead is the verification body and the global community for these fair trade enterprises. These enterprises provide a fundamentally different kind of power relationship for workers, farmers and artisans who would otherwise have little power or priority within a typical business. Some of the models are cooperatives. Others are hybrid models that have combined collective ownership with a social mission.

Take, for example, CORR – The Jute Works in Bangladesh, structured to give their 5,000 artisans majority control on their board and ensure profits are used to benefit these artisans. Other examples are Township Patterns in South Africa and Global Mamas in Ghana – businesses that exist solely to support artisan-owned producer groups and reinvest profits for that purpose. In Ecuador, Maquita runs several social businesses, investing all profits to benefit their communities and ensure they are represented on their boards. In India, models like Creative Handicrafts and Last Forest demonstrate that worker and farmer ownership can compete with profit-hungry apparel factories and clothing outlets. And consider Mahaguthi in Nepal, which protects its social mission by requiring all profits be reinvested to benefit its workers and artisans.

The chief executives of such businesses are not pressured to drive down costs and squeeze their suppliers. On the contrary, the voices of workers and farmers dominate their board rooms, forcing management to run the business in their interests. There are now 330 such fair trade enterprises that span over seventy countries, remaining commercially viable by prioritizing a social mission. The experiment is indeed working.

MISSION-DRIVEN BY DESIGN

I was captivated by this diversity of businesses that are bucking the mainstream business trend. So, I dug deep and analyzed all 330 World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO) members to find that they all share some common trends in the way that they are structured. They all had at least one of these four features to ensure that their business is mission-led:

• a board that represents a diverse range of stakeholders,
• a limit on the profits being extracted for shareholders,
• an explicit mission in their governing documents, or
• part ownership by a mission-led organization (such as a community organization).

In essence, such models all have liberated themselves from the need to maximize returns to shareholders. When this single-minded focus is removed, a broader mission is possible.

In her book Doughnut Economics, best-selling author Kate Raworth describes the need to “design to distribute” in ensuring that the business world and our economies create a society and planet that thrives. Since design thinking is now in vogue, I wonder if we can allow ourselves to apply it to business. But if we are to design businesses differently, we must look beyond the design of products, or even their models of generating income. It is about revisiting the design of the very core of business – its purpose. This means giving ourselves the liberty to rewire business in order to pursue what society needs from it. Fair trade enterprises show that this is possible, and movement’s audacious experiment may be ready to inspire something bigger.

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The post The Economy Has Been Rigged. We Can Change That! appeared first on Fair World Project.

The meat at the center of many Americans’ plates is also at the center of some of our world’s greatest ecological and public health threats: deforestation, biodiversity loss, water scarcity, climate change, water pollution, diet-related disease, antibiotic resistance and more. The vast majority of animal products sold in restaurants and supermarkets, and served at institutions like schools and hospitals, in the U.S. comes from factory farms. On factory farms, billions of animals are raised in intensive, inhumane confinement. These factory farms generate a huge amount of toxic pollution that contaminates our air and water and deprives rural communities of the right to raise their families in a safe and healthy environment. This harm is exacerbated by agricultural policies that favor industrial animal agriculture.

THE TOLL OF INDUSTRIAL ANIMAL AGRICULTURE ON OUR PLANET

The climate impacts of industrial animal agriculture are particularly alarming. Livestock production accounts for about 16.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, which is more than the emissions from all of the cars, trucks, trains, buses, boats and planes across the globe.

It takes an enormous amount of feed to raise the nine billion animals confined in our country’s feedlots. For every one pound of steak, a beef cow requires seven to ten pounds of grain. Producing that quantity of feed requires massive amounts of fuel, fertilizers, pesticides and land. Animal products also require significant amounts of water – as much as 2,000 gallons of water per pound of beef. In other words, producing an eight-ounce steak requires as much water as eight showers.

Aside from using a staggering amount of water and diesel fuel, GMO feed grain production requires the use of energy-intensive pesticides and fertilizers, which often end up in our rivers, streams and groundwater. These inputs also impact our atmosphere: when fertilizer is applied to soil, it generates nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas with 300 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide.

Eventually, all of that subsidized animal feed will turn into mountains of toxic manure, which is spread back onto the fields or stored in big lagoon pits. This often leads to the leaching of pollutants found in animal waste, such as antibiotics and nitrates, into the groundwater or nearby streams. This waste also generates large amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas that is eighty-six times more potent a gas than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.

Animals are pumped full of antibiotics to keep them alive in crowded and unsanitary conditions. In fact, 80% of all antibiotics are given to animals, and this overuse contributes to the rise of antibiotic-resistant “superbugs,” a major public health crisis.

CONSEQUENCES BEYOND CLIMATE AND PUBLIC HEALTH

Industrial animal agriculture hurts rural communities and workers, too. Factory farms are disproportionately located in low-income communities and communities of color, where people are forced to withstand noxious odors and contaminated air and water.

An estimated 50% of farmworkers do not have legal authorization to work in the U.S., exacerbating the dangers that they face, such as a fear of retribution for reporting injuries, workplace hazards and illegal conditions. Slaughterhouses are particularly dangerous workplaces, with a turnover rate exceeding 95-100% annually.

PUBLIC POLICIES TO FIGHT INDUSTRIAL ANIMAL AGRICULTURE

We can drastically reduce the impacts of industrial animal agriculture by changing public policies at the local, state and federal levels. We need to end the stranglehold that the meat industry has over our government and the market. Meat and dairy companies should have to pay for the environmental and public health damages that they cause. And instead of subsidizing industrial animal agriculture, governments should be incentivizing higher welfare, pasture-based, organic farming systems. In addition, we need to ask institutions – like restaurants, schools and hospitals – to use their purchasing power to promote sustainable, plant-based foods and better meat that is healthier for people and the planet. For instance, K-12 schools serve seven billion meals each year. If every public school swapped out a beef burger for a protein-rich veggie burger on the school lunch menu just once a month, it would save the equivalent of 1,407,533,657 pounds of CO2, the equivalent of over 1.5 billion fewer miles driven.

WE CAN MAKE CHANGE

Each of us has a role to play in advocating for a just and sustainable food system that does not rely on factory farming. To start, here are three things you can do as a citizen to fight industrial animal agriculture:

• Ask food purchasing businesses that you patronize, such as restaurants and hospitals, to serve less factory-farmed meat and dairy in favor of more plant-based meal options and pasture-raised, organic meat and dairy.
• Ask your city or county representatives to pass a policy that directs public dollars away from factory-farmed meat and dairy.
• If you have a child or grandchild in school, contact their school administrators and ask them to offer more plant-based meal options for lunch.

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The post The High Cost of Cheap Meat appeared first on Fair World Project.

Our staff and editorial board share some of their favorite foods (and drinks!) that offer their own answer to those questions – and are delicious, too.

Find them online or at your favorite natural food store!

TWIN OAKS TOFU

As a vegan of twenty years, tofu has long been a staple in my diet. Tofu gets a bad reputation for being bland but I love to show people that, properly prepared, it’s delicious. Twin Oaks tofu is produced using organic soybeans grown in Virginia where it is made. Twin Oaks is a worker-owned cooperative that seeks to encourage collectivism and democratic decision-making. Their 100+ members pool what they earn through their community businesses, and that is just another way the makers of this glorious tofu are changing the food system. – FLETCHER
www.TwinOaksTofu.com

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FREY VINEYARDS ORGANIC ZINFANDEL

Frey Vineyards has been a pioneer in the organic wine industry for almost forty years. The first organic and biodynamic winery in the U.S., Frey Vineyards has an amazing selection of organic and biodynamic wines. My favorite wine is their biodynamic Zinfandel. It is a bold red wine, perfect for winter evenings. Additionally, the Frey family has been a strong advocate for organic standards and GMO-free agriculture. – RYAN
www.FreyWine.com

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SWANTON BERRY FARMS ORGANIC STRAWBERRIES

Organic strawberries from Swanton Berry Farms are by far the best strawberries I have ever tasted. They are fresh, organic and union-grown. It makes sense that Swanton strawberries are the tastiest, since their farmworkers are treated with respect and dignity through union contracts, living wages and good health care. This is the way all of our produce should be grown! – DANA
www.SwantonBerryFarm.com

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CAFÉ MAM ORGANIC MOCHÓ BLEND

With so many choices of coffee, my personal favorite morning wake-up cup is Café Mam. Arabica beans, native to Ethiopia, are grown in the Mam region of Chiapas, in the Sierra Madre mountains, by organic, small-scale farmers. With a belief in honoring and healing the earth, sustainable development, education in organic agriculture, and so much more, Café Mam is setting a high standard for ethical coffee production. Their love of the land can be tasted with each sip. My personal favorites are the Italian Roast and Mochó Blend. – STUART
www.CafeMam.com

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EQUAL EXCHANGE PALESTINIAN FARMER BOX

Last spring, I took a chance and placed an order for a box of food that I knew I would not taste for nine months. It paid off, and I got to sample the most delicious, rich dates I had ever tasted, as well as some of the most flavorful almonds – when shelled, each tasted like it had the essence of two or three ordinary almonds concentrated inside. Equal Exchange is a long-time leader in the fair trade movement, and this project is an innovative way to engage eaters directly in supporting small-scale farmer supply chain development. I am looking forward to seeing some of the treats from this box show up in their regular product line-up – and for more opportunities to engage in these kinds of projects. – ANNA
www.EqualExchange.coop

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The post Product Picks – Issue 18 appeared first on Fair World Project.