Here is a good reason to get your Darjeeling Tea from Equal Exchange:
From: Grist via WorldWatch Institute blog
"Unhappily, simply buying tea labeled Fair Trade doesn’t much affect conditions on the ground in Darjeeling...
...this is devastating. Even Western consumers who try to do the right thing by buying Fair Trade are financing ecological damage and poverty cycles in Darjeeling.
But ...he also points to an alternative: a cooperative project started by families who took over a tea plantation abandoned when the British left India in 1947. For decades, Kane writes, they shunned the global tea market and supported themselves through subsistence agriculture. Then 10 years ago, with the help of NGOs, they formed a dairy cooperative called Sanjukta Vikas Cooperative (SVC) to sell milk locally. Later, they revived the old tea bushes and began to produce organic tea, marketed in the United States by Massachusetts-based Equal Exchange under a Fair Trade label...
With increased profits, SVC has also been able to expand beyond tea and dairy. With the help of DLR Prerna, many SVC farmers have developed permaculture operations, integrating their tea bushes into agroforestry systems in which they grow cardamom, fresh vegetables, and raise cows and chickens. Trees prevent soil erosion and maintain habitat for animals that reduce pest pressure, and cows and chickens provide manure that can be used to fertilize crops. By diversifying their production, farmers are also creating more markets for their goods, giving them added financial security...
These farmers have turned their involvement in the global tea trade into hard assets: schools, clinics, and food-production infrastructure...
I think the lesson here is that global trade in food and agricultural products works best when it’s done in a limited fashion."
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