Fair Trade Teas

If you want to experience Fair Trade for yourself and can’t justify hopping on a plane to your nearest Fair Trade tea or coffee farm, October brings your opportunity– it is Fair Trade month in the US and the world of Fair Trade is coming over for a visit!

Across the US, from Oregon to New York, you will find Fair Trade product tastings, grower visits, lectures, conferences and fesivals at grocery stores, universities and community centers this month.  Look here for a list that Fair Trade Certified USA has compiled of events happening in your area.

Partners Tea Co. will be sampling Fair Trade and Organic artisan teas at local Whole Foods in the Southeast.  Check here for updates.  On October 23rd in Berkeley, celebrate at Whole Foods’ Fair Trade Fair.  Nell Newman will be speaking in Oregon during the month on her “Taste a Better World” tour and Nicaraguan coffee farmer, Cesar Gonzales, will be discussing how Fair Trade changes lives in his community.

If you can’t make it out to an event or tasting, you can still experience Fair Trade by buying Fair Trade coffee, tea, chocolate, bananas and other goods, listed here.  Many stores are offering a discount on Fair Trade goods this month.  Fred Meyer has Green Mountain coffee on sale all month.  Partners Tea Company is offering 10% off at www.partnerstea.com.  Just enter “FAIRTRADE” at checkout.

If you have never supported Fair Trade before, this is your chance– you’ll be glad you did!

Well, September, cooler weather and hot tea season are finally here! I have a couple of tea education events coming up in the next few weeks. Please come by if you are able!
Saturday, 9/ 18- Searcy, Arkansas “Enjoying Tea with Sarah Scarborough’ hosted by First Community Bank, Batesville, Arkansas 2-4 PM Ann’s Bridal & Etc.

Saturday, September 25, The Herb Society of Nashville’s Annual Herb Day, Cheekwood Botanical Garden, 10-3.

Hope to see you there!

In January of this year, The New York Times ranked Sri Lanka as its #1 “Place to Go in 2010”, and rightfully so, as Sri Lanka is arguably one of the most naturally beautiful corners of our planet. The tear-dropped shaped island has recently been portrayed as a “corner”, having been marred by years of internal conflict between the Sinhalese and the Tamils. The past year has witnessed domestic peace, which hopefully will continue for ages to come.

But peace in a third-world country is tenuous, as most of the citizens live on means that most Westerners will never be fully capable of understanding. However, as Amartya Sen famously penned in the first sentence of his Nobel Prize winning work “Development As Freedom”, “development can be seen as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy.” And freedom and peace go hand in hand.

For most countries, the starting point for economic development is by and through its earth-given natural resources. In many African countries, like Ghana, these are fossil fuels. In many South American countries, like Brazil, these are soils where tropical crops like sugar cane are grown. In Sri Lanka, due to its unique combination of location-altitude-temperature-rainfall, it is tea production. Tea here is known as Ceylon tea, taking the former name of the country.

For the past century, Ceylon tea has been regarded around the world as the global standard for quality. I can attest. In 2004, I made my first of many visits to the island and to the world’s first organic tea estate–Indulgashinna,. I have been working with the tea growers at Idulgashinna ever since to help promote peace and sustainable economic development by promoting the ethical trade of the country’s high quality tea globally.

My company, Partner’s Tea Company, sources our Fair Trade and Organic Pure Ceylon Green Tea from this estate. We give one percent of our total annual revenue back to the community of tea growers at Idulgashinna through their non profit association– Idulgashinna Bio Tea Association for Development (IBITAD), as our mission is to “empower women through education and opportunity with 1% of every purchase”.

Fair Trade estates provide education for children

Fair Trade is a trading partnership, based on dialogue, transparency and respect, that seeks greater equity in international trade. It contributes to sustainable development by offering better trading conditions to, and securing the rights of, marginalized producers and workers – especially in the South. Fair Trade organizations (backed by consumers) are engaged actively in supporting producers, awareness raising and in campaigning for changes in the rules and practice of conventional international trade. Fair Trade’s strategic intent is:
deliberately to work with marginalized producers and workers in order to help them move from a position of vulnerability to security and economic self-sufficiency
to empower producers and workers as stakeholders in their own organizations
to actively to play a wider role in the global arena to achieve greater equity in international trade.”

Photo: Children of tea workers play at a school at Idulgashinna estate, Sri Lanka.