Equal Exchange

Equal Exchange

Company type	cooperative
Founded	1986
Headquarters	West Bridgewater, Massachusetts, Hood River, Oregon, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Products	coffee, tea, sugar, chocolate, almonds, pecans, dried cranberries
Number of employees	100
Website	www.equalexchange.coop

Equal Exchange is a for-profit Fairtrade worker-owned, cooperative founded in 1986 and headquartered in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Equal Exchange distributes organic, gourmet coffee, tea, sugar, cocoa, and chocolate bars produced by farmer cooperatives in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Equal Exchange also partners with small farmer co-ops in the United States for their Domestic Fair Trade line that includes pecans, almonds, and cranberries.

Mission

Equal Exchange's mission is to build long-term trade partnerships that are economically just and environmentally sound, to foster mutually beneficial relationships between farmers and consumers and to demonstrate, through our success, the contribution of worker co-operatives and Fair Trade to a more equitable, democratic and sustainable world.

Guiding Principles

• Trade directly with democratically organized small farmer cooperatives.
• Facilitate access to credit for producer organizations.
• Pay producers a guaranteed minimum price that provides a stable source of income as well as improved social services.
• Provide high quality food products.
• Support sustainable farming practices.
• Build a democratically-run cooperative workplace.
• Develop more environmentally-sound business practices.

Vision

In June 2006, Equal Exchange's worker-owners approved a powerful vision for Equal Exchange's next 20 years:

A Vision for Equal Exchange
There will be... A vibrant mutually cooperative community of two million committed participants trading fairly one billion dollars a year in a way that transforms the world.

Worker-Ownership

Equal Exchange is organized as a democratic worker cooperative, now one of the largest in the country.

This includes:

• the right to vote (one vote per employee, not per share);
• the right to serve as leader (i.e. board director);
• the right to information;
• the right to speak your mind.

Small Farmers. Big Change.

The “Small Farmers. Big Change.” campaign represents a path to bringing justice to the food system and health to the planet. The campaign promotes: steps to reduce our environmental footprint and help farmers save their local ecosystems; and support for agriculture and trade policies that benefit small-scale producers and workers instead of large corporations. Stay up-to-date on the campaign: Small Farmers Big Change blog.

Awards

• 2008 Worldblu World's Most Democratic Workplaces
• 2008 Fast Company magazine Social Capitalist Award
• 2007 Worldblu World's Most Democratic Workplaces
• 2006 SBANE Innovation Award
• 2000 Business Ethics Magazine Stakeholder Award

History of Equal Exchange

Fairness to farmers. A closer connection between people and the farmers we all rely on. This was the essence of the vision that the three Equal Exchange founders — Rink Dickinson, Jonathan Rosenthal, and Michael Rozyne — held in their minds and hearts as they stood together on a metaphorical cliff back in 1986.

The three, who had met each other as managers at a New England food co-op, were part of a movement to transform the relationship between the public and food producers. At the time, however, these efforts didn’t extend to farmers outside of the U.S.

The founders decided to meet once a week — and did so for three years — to discuss how best to change the way food is grown, bought, and sold around the world. What they dreamed up was a grand vision — with a somewhat shaky grounding in reality. But Rink, Jonathan, and Michael understood that significant change only happens when you’re open to taking big risks. So they cried "¡Adelante!" (rough translation from the Spanish: "No turning back!”) and took a running leap off the cliff. They left their jobs. They invested their own money. And they turned to their families and friends for start-up funds and let them know there was a good chance they would never see that money again.

The core group of folks believed in their cause and decided to invest. Their checks provided the $100,000 needed to start the new company. With this modest financing in hand, Rink, Jonathan, and Michael headed into the great unknown. At best, the project, which coupled a private business model with a nonprofit mission, was viewed as utopian; at worst it was regarded as foolish. For the first three years Equal Exchange struggled and, like many new ventures, lost money. But the founders hung on; by the third year they began to break even.

In the mid-1980’s the world of food was going through major changes. The U.S. public was beginning to see their nation’s family farms squeezed out and replaced by industrial-scale, corporate-run agribusinesses reliant on toxic chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. As a result, consumer food co-ops who offered their members more organic and locally produced food grew in popularity.

At the same time, the U.S. specialty coffee market was exploding. Coffee aficionados, including many influenced by their travels in Europe, were eager to find and make great coffee here at home. It was not a coincidence that the founders arrived at a strategy to start their venture with fairly traded specialty coffee.

They chose Nicaraguan coffee — which they called Café Nica — as the first Equal Exchange product for a few reasons. In 1986, the Reagan administration imposed an embargo on all products from Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. Importing coffee beans from Nicaragua would demonstrate solidarity with the fledgling people's movement and would challenge U.S. trade policies.

Equal Exchange brought Nicaraguan coffee into the U.S. through a loophole in the law. If the coffee was roasted in another country, it could be regarded as a product from that country, and therefore legally imported into the U.S. A friendly Dutch alternative trade organization stepped forward to offer assistance with the brokering and roasting.

Alerted to this symbolic action, the Reagan administration tried to stop the tiny organization. Officials seized Equal Exchange’s Nicaraguan coffee as soon as it arrived in the port of Boston. During their first two years of business, the founders spent many days, with trade lawyers at their side, doing battle with customs officials. Each time the coffee cargo was released it was a small victory.

In 1988, the Office of Foreign Assets Control threatened to close the loophole, and Equal Exchange’s founders launched a campaign against the move. Local and national congressmen, such as Rep. Joe Moakley and his dynamic assistant Jim McGovern, provided critical help alongside a groundswell of grassroots support. The result was a victory that made it clear that Equal Exchange wasn’t going away. Now Rink, Jonathan, and Michael — and a few new members of the Equal Exchange worker-cooperative — could focus all of their efforts on building their alternative business.

Interfaith Program

In 1996, Equal Exchange joined with Lutheran World Relief in a pathbreaking collaboration to launch what has now become the Interfaith Program. This major initiative helped Equal Exchange create partnerships with communities of faith throughout the U.S. Over the next seven years, more than 10,000 congregations across the U.S. began using our Fair Trade coffee.

Fundraising Program

The Equal Exchange Fair Trade Fundraising Program is an alternative to typical fundraisers.

The Fair Trade Fundraising Program has a full line of Fair Trade and organic products, offers competitive profit margins for groups, a full color fundraising catalog, and educational tools to incorporate learning about Fair Trade in your classroom or community group.

Challenges

The growth of Fair Trade has not come without profound challenges. The acceptance of large plantations and corporations such as Nestlé into the Fair Trade labeling system calls into question the very underpinnings of the certification system of which they are a part. Most small-scale farmers around the world remain impoverished and at the mercy of volatile and complex commodity systems.

External links

• Equal Exchange Web site
• Equal Exchange Review and Video about their Coffee process
• The Equal Exchange blog on building a greener and more just food system