Creating a Local Fair Trade Label

Creating a Local Fair Trade Label

Summary

Work on a “Local Fair Trade Pledge” has been slow to start. With the late notification date and delayed disbursement of funds, due to Federal Budget delays, we were unable to meet with farmers before the growing season. This meant we had to wait until on-farm tasks began to slow down, before getting farmers together. At this point in the project participating farms have been identified, applications have been distributed, and a deadline of early January has been set to collect completed applications. All but two of the farms should be processed and verified by the spring, and the remaining farms will be processed as soon as their on-farm labor arrives in the new season, and on-farm inspection can occur. We expect to launch a full scale promotion of the pledge in June 2012 – in time for Farmers Market promotion and for CSA farmers to use for their 2013 season.

Objectives/Performance Targets

Farmer Recruitment – A total of eight farmers have been recruited for the project, which is two more than our goal- giving us cushion in case two do not complete the pilot. Primary outreach to farmers consisted of a potluck picnic-meeting at Mud Creek Farm for the AJP Pledge pilot. Farmers from 4 farms attended; and a 5th farm failed to show. We had an excellent discussion of the project , and farmers made a few really good suggestions for modifying the wording of the pledge to cover the special needs of beginning farmers. They had specific questions about timing and expressed wanting help with outreach and promotion of the pledge. One of the tenets of fair trade is that all workers, including the farm-owner, should be making a living wage. This resulted in a lively discussion about the struggle to cover operating costs while setting aside the monetary resources to acquire infrastructure needed to run an efficient farm. None of these farmers is making what would qualify for a living wage, as they build their businesses. They like the idea of charging a 5% premium that will go towards farmer wages or employee benefits. Our timing is to have farms accepted into the pilot, in time for 2013 advertising for CSA members and the 2012 farmers markets.

Accomplishments/Milestones

To date, the major accomplishments of the program include recruitment and orientation of the farmers to the program, introduction of the Agricultural Justice Standards to the famers, distribution of applications to the farmers, modification of the inspection training documents for peer-inspectors, adaptation of the AJP Certification logo for use in the pledge program, and provisional recruitment of peer inspectors from a team of Cornell students and CRAFT Project Interns.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

To date the pilot has not yet made significant contributions, as it is in start-up phase of the process. The two impacts it has had is to raise the level of discussion about living wage and employee participation among this small cadre of farmers, and to introduce farmers to a new marketing label that could help cover the costs of providing on-farm living wages.

Collaborators: