OntheWilderSide

 

As Fair Trade month continues, so too does Co-op America’s Fair Trade banana campaign.From Anchorage to Miami and from Los Angeles to Portland, Maine, Co-op America members have taken our pledge to work with more than 3,000 local supermarkets to carry the next break-out Fair Trade Certified™ product — Fair Trade bananas.Read more about Fair Trade bananas »Not long after we started our campaign this summer, we received an encouraging note from Lucienne Allen, a member in Gualala, California.I used Co-op America’s letter to contact my grocer,” Lucienne told us. “The letter had links to several sources for Fair Trade bananas, so the prouce manager didn’t have to do a bunch of research, and within two days the bananas were in the store. They are delicious!”See our sample letter to grocers »Before her grocer made the switch, Lucienne had been buying Dole bananas, but she suspected their track record was much like other conventional banana companies, like Chiquita, which pleaded guilty this spring to transacting with terrorist organizations.Lucienne was right. Huge banana companies have a long history of labor and environmental abuses throughout Central and South America. But with Fair Trade, you can be sure that producers at the beginning of the supply chain are receiving a fair price for their labor and that farmers are keeping dangerous pesticides out of the environment. Fair Trade means a fair deal for farmers, and a healthier environment for all of us.Take action now to help getFair Trade into more supermarkets »When you click through to take our online pledge, we’ll also add your signature to our letter — going out to major supermarket chains — asking them to give Fair Trade fruit a presence in their stores.We’ll follow the progress of our members who work to change their local stores, so please tell us about your successes with this campaign.Here at Co-op America, we salute all of our members who have been involved in our campaigns this year. Thanks to your willingness to use the power of email and the Internet, we’ve had major victories for the environment and communities, social and economic justice. Special kudos to these 3,000 members making the Fair Trade banana pledge – you are amplifying what we can do together by moving it from online activism to action in your communities. You are the best! We hope all of our members will join in by taking this campaign to their grocery stores.Thanks for all you do for people and the planet,Alisa GravitzExecutive DirectorCo-op America—————-Now playing: Trey Anastasio – Alive Againvia FoxyTunes

Filed under: Food, social & economic justice Tagged: | fair trade bananas