Halloween is a time for ghosts, goblins and the latest cartoon or sci-fi characters. And oh the candy! This year is the fifth annual Reverse Trick-or-Treating, an initiative of Global Exchange’s Sweet Smarts network, with leadership from Equal Exchange. Trick-or-treaters around the country will be handing out fair trade chocolate to over 100,000 adults who normally would be handing goodies to them.

This national giveback event focuses awareness on child slave labor, trafficking, poverty and hazardous environmental conditions rampant within the cocoa industry. (See Civil Eats coverage of this issue here and here.)

In 2003, the U.S. State Department issued a report stating that “approximately 109,000 child laborers working in hazardous conditions on cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast,” a country where “the law does not prohibit trafficking in people.”

There’s documented forced child labor in the Ivory Coast, a large source of the chocolate sold in the U.S., said Kelsie Evans, worker/co-owner of Equal Exchange, a chocolate fair trade organization that supports farming cooperatives around the world who provide sustainable farming methods.

The average cocoa farmer may earn up to $100 a year—nowhere near what it takes to take care of a family. To maximize cocoa yields, wildlife habitat gets destroyed and increased pesticide use is encouraged. All this for the gooey chocolate treats you hand out every year.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Harkin-Engel Protocol—an agreement by this country’s largest chocolate companies to put an end to forced child labor on cocoa farms in West Africa by 2005. While some of the chocolatiers have made strides to correct these abuses, Hershey’s has done little, activists say.

Global Exchange, Green America and the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) issued a joint report targeting Hershey named “Time to Raise the Bar, Hershey!” It details how hundreds of thousands of children are still being forced to work under abusive conditions for long hours on cocoa farms in West Africa, while others are victims of trafficking and forced labor. The documentary, “The Dark Side of Chocolate,” also profiles this sobering subject.

But change is happening. Five years ago, Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based, international humanitarian organization, partnered with Equal Exchange to create the first Reverse Trick-or-Treating event.

It’s a hard topic to talk about, says Evans. “Chocolate is seen as a source of joy in the world,” she said. But, she added, “Children grasp some of these concepts about fairness.”

Reverse Trick-or-Treating happens Halloween night, according to Kylie Nealis, the coordinator of the campaign.

“It’s kids taking action on a problem that affects other children,” she said.

“It’s a great teaching moment,” said Rodney North, The Answer Man and co-owner of Equal Exchange. “There’s a surprise factor of the child down the street is bringing the lesson to me—and you get to eat the solution.”

Originally published on Global Exchange

Equator’s hyper-efficient smart coffee roaster burns 80 percent less natural gas than a traditional coffee roaster.

On a recent trip to Africa, I was fortunate to visit several coffee farms and meet the local growers. The work is grueling, the market unpredictable, and the direct rewards minimal in light of the $80 billion coffee trade, in which most farmers around the world earn three cents for a $3 cup of coffee. Overly caffeinated San Francisco, aflutter with buzz about new cafés and roasters, is ground zero for the current coffee craze. But I wondered, while walking through the coffee fields and talking with the workers, (many of whom earn roughly $2 a day), if most folks here also make the connection to the global implications of their morning Joe.

Coffee, the U.S.’s largest food import and second most valuable traded commodity only after oil, is rife with complex issues involving human labor, the environment, and international trade, all of which are succinctly laid out in the 2006 documentary Black Gold and in Daniel Jaffe’s Brewing Justice. According to Global Exchange, there are approximately 25 million farmers and coffee workers in over 50 countries involved in producing coffee around the world. Coffee producers, like most agricultural workers around the world, are kept in a cycle of poverty and debt by the current global economy designed to exploit cheap labor and keep consumer prices low.

The magnitude of the matter is staggering and one might wonder the best way to get a good and fair cup. Fortunately, one Bay Area roaster stands out for its commitment to quality, environmental sustainability, and social responsibility. Founded in 1995, San Rafael-based Equator Coffees & Teas has justifiably earned an outstanding reputation as coffee purveyors and roasters and is far ahead of the curve in advancing sustainability practices that encourage productive relationships and an empowered chain of supply.

Equator Co-Founders Brooke McDonnell & Helen Russel.

Co-founders Helen Russell and Brooke McDonnell procure coffees from growers who practice responsible land stewardship and ensure superior quality through artisan blend development, efficient small-batch roasting, and cutting-edge brewing technology and training. Over half of Equator’s coffees are certified Organic, Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance, or a combination of all three. Named America’s 2010 Roaster of the Year in Roast Magazine’s highly competitive challenge, Equator triumphed over 40 of the country’s best coffee roasters for their special blend of quality, sustainability, and business innovation.

Russell and McDonnell see their work as part of a global community in an often over-inflated industry. They forge direct relationships with growers, purchased their own farm in Panama (its Geisha varietal will be harvested in 2012) where they support the local economy, and offer microcredit loans to their farmers, impacting the lives of growers worldwide as well as the long-term supply chain.

“We have a deep respect for the farmers’ work that translates into paying a fair price for our coffee, supporting farm projects and focusing on delivering a quality cup that does justice to their efforts,” McDonnell said.

Chido’s Blend.

The company’s latest project works to increase food security for orphan girls in Africa. Through sales of Equator’s Chido’s Blend, the company supports the work of Chido Governo, a young Zimbabwean woman who teaches orphaned girls how to grow food using compost created from coffee processing and other agricultural waste. (Coffee waste is ideal for growing mushrooms, an upcycling project providing food security for orphan girls in war-torn countries.) Chido is now training 2,500 women in more than 100 villages in Ghana. Green Coffee Buyer David Pohl recently returned from Ethiopia and wrote about his experience there.

As it turns out, good business is good business: Russell and McDonnell have won numerous awards for achieving 10 to 20 percent annual growth over the past 12 years (this in one of the greatest economic down turns in recent times): Revenues now exceed $5 million. “We are in a business of relationships and they are formed over a well-brewed cup of coffee,” Russell said. “We do this for our growers, our employees and their families and to leave a legacy for roasters in the Bay Area.”

Equator’s commitment to closing the gap between bean and cup, its specialty coffee blends, and its unique, long-term relationships with growers and businesses set it apart. The team has quietly built their empire over years, quickly winning over Thomas Keller, who for the past 12 years has exclusively brewed Equator drip coffee at The French Laundry and since opening Per Se. “Equator provides such exceptional coffee because they are completely engaged at every step of the process and always focused on quality,” Keller said. “They are fastidious about sourcing, roasting, packing, delivery and training, instilling in our staff a sense of what is important about a great cup of coffee.”

Traci Des Jardins of Jardinière and Elizabeth Falkner of Citizen Cake are longtime fans as well. And for those in the know, Equator is on the menu at Arizmendi, La Boulange, and Bouchon bakeries (its latest foray opens in March at Rockefeller Center in NYC, in the former spot coveted by Dean & Deluca). You can also buy your home brew locally at Bi-Rite Market, Rainbow Grocery, Berkeley Bowl, Whole Foods, and even on Facebook—the company was one of the first to get wired via online sales.

This April, you’ll be able to get your fix on the fly, when Equator opens its first retail café at Napa Farms Market in SFO’s Terminal 2. The 4,000-square foot marketplace, designed by Baldauf Catton von Eckartsberg Architects, the masters behind The San Francisco Ferry Building Marketplace and the Oxbow Public Market in Napa, will feature Equator front and center. Bay Area devotees will soon be able to sip and support Equator in a new spot, location TBD. In the meantime, to learn more about the coffee trade, you can go here.

Photos: Naomi Fiss

Originally published on Inside Scoop SF

Chocolate. For many of us, the sight, aroma and tongue coating decadence are enough to send the brain’s pleasure receptors into overdrive. Seemingly always prized, it has been used over hundreds of years as an offering in religious ceremonies, a currency, and often reserved for the ruling elite. Interest in chocolate often borders on obsession, so much so, that the botanical name for the cacao plant, Theobroma cacao, means “food of the Gods.” Those who testified to the chocolate gospel helped spread it around the world and it has since come to bring simple pleasure to citizens far and wide, high and low across the planet.

Sadly, however, there is a dark side to chocolate that many consumers are often blissfully unaware of, or deliberately chose to ignore. Cacao is grown predominantly on small family farms in a narrow tropical band around the equator. While a handful of massive global corporations control and profit handsomely from the worldwide chocolate trade, millions of cacao farmers and their families toil in poverty year after year and deforestation is widespread. Worse still, child slavery tragically persists, despite reputable international reports that surfaced over a decade ago–in particular highlighting the world’s largest exporter of cocoa, the Ivory Coast.

Mindful of the unbearable social and environmental costs endemic to the current chocolate trade, and concluding that the industry doesn’t have the resolve to create material positive change, many courageous folks are responding with a different approach. Fair Trade, Direct Trade, Profit Sharing, Co-ops, and Bean to Bar are among many alternatives being pursued.

On Tuesday, February 22, 2010 at 6:45 pm at Viracocha in San Francisco, Kitchen Table Talks will host an intimate gathering with some industry leaders to discuss the issues. Joining us in the conversation will be:

Brett Beach: Inspired in part by his work with the Peace Corps in Madagascar, Brett co-founded Madecasse in 2006. Its unique mission is to partner with cacao farmers and other community members to make world-class chocolate right on the island. They believe this Bean-to-Bar model has four times more economic benefit than selling beans at Fair Trade prices alone.

Christine Doerr: After graduating from the California Culinary Academy and various stints as a pastry chef, Christine made the leap to pursue her own truffle business. After being accepted into San Francisco’s La Cocina incubator program in 2008, Neo Cocoa was born.

Adrienne Fitch-Frankel: Adrienne has worked for diverse human rights and environmental advocacy organizations and is currently the Fair Trade Campaign Director for Global Exchange in San Francisco. Her area of expertise is the impact of commodities, both extractive and agricultural, on local communities.

John Kehoe: In various capacities, John’s work has been dedicated to the procurement and marketing of specialty cocoa, working closely with farmers, exporters, importers, and chocolate manufacturers since 1991. Founder of the specialty cocoa brokerage “EcoTrade” in 2002, John is currently the VP of Sourcing and Development for Tcho in San Francisco.

Carlos Mann: Born in Nicaragua, Carlos was a lifelong illustrator/designer until 2005 when he founded The Momotombo Chocolate Factory. He is the founder of OMETEOTE, a cacao education initiative that works to empower Nicaraguan cacao farmers and regular folks alike with marketable traditional Mesoamerican chocolate making skills. Carlos has lived in Costa Rica, India, and is an ex-S.F. Mission district resident.

Special Note: Fair Trade chocolate pastry will be graciously prepared by Jim Dodge of Bon Appétit Management Company. Jim is a revered pastry chef, teacher, cookbook author, and currently serves as the Director of Special Culinary Programs at Bon Appétit.

Please note: Please join us at 6:45 pm, an earlier than normal start time, for a brief segment from the award-winning documentary “Slavery: A Global Investigation,” a harrowing look into modern day slavery in the chocolate industry based on the groundbreaking work of Kevin Bales, author of Disposable People.

Special and sincere thanks to Haven Bourque of HavenBMedia, a media relations firm based in Oakland, and Sunita de Tourreil of The Chocolate Garage, an education and retail shop in Palo Alto, for their help in preparing this talk.

Tuesday, February 22, 2010

Viracocha, 998 Valencia Street @ 21st Street, San Francisco

Food and drink at 6:15 pm; Film and Discussion at 6:45 pm

Kitchen Table Talks is a joint venture of CivilEats and 18 Reasons, a non-profit that promotes conversation between its San Francisco Mission neighborhood and the people who feed them. Space is limited, so please RSVP. Due to a high level of no-shows, we ask that you kindly respect those in our community who are truly able to attend. Please RSVP with consideration.

A $10 suggested donation is requested at the door, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Sustainable food and refreshments will be provided, courtesy of Bi-Rite Market and Shoe Shine Wine.

For every sack of apples wearing its “I’m local” label proudly, there is a cup of coffee that will never be able to proclaim such a thing. Between all of those trips to the farmer’s market to shake hands with the farmer growing your dinner, and short of traveling to the coffee farm yourself, what is the devoted locavore who wants their morning brew to do?

Stumptown Coffee Roasters has come up with one solution: they bring the coffee farmer to you.

Last week Stumptown, which has roasteries and shops in Seattle, Portland, and soon, New York City, held the fourth in its series of “Meet the Producers” events in Portland and Seattle, pouring cups of El Salvadorian Finca Kilimanjaro coffee for all of those who turned up to hear the grower of that coffee speak. Aida Batlle, a fifth generation coffee producer whose family left El Salvador amid a burgeoning civil war when she was seven, returned in 2002 to the land that her family has owned for decades after years of living in Nashville and Miami. She knew little about growing coffee when she returned to El Salvador, and when her Finca (farm, in Spanish) Kilimanjaro won first place in El Salvador’s Cup of Excellence competition in 2003, her US-based family was as shocked as she was.

Coffee grown by farmers like Aida and roasted and marketed by companies such as Stumptown is part of a recent push to surpass the standards set by labeling regimes such as organic and Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance and Bird Friendly. These labels, now commonly found on coffees sold through both high-end cafes and also grocery stores, have attempted to fulfill coffee drinkers’ demand for knowledge about where their coffee is coming from and how it was grown and processed.

Aida sells to Counter Culture Coffee, based in Durham, North Carolina, to Sweet Maria’s, based in San Francisco, and to a handful of roasters in Europe and Japan through Direct Trade guidelines. The waiting list to import her coffee is long, and she maintains a firm policy of only selling to buyers whom she has not only met but also respects. This reciprocal relationship between coffee grower and roaster/distributor is the hallmark of the Direct Trade process and is also what makes growing organically, paying high wages, and supporting the community surrounding Aida’s farms possible.

From her three farms in western El Salvador, Finca Kilimanjaro, Finca Los Alpes, and Finca Mauritania, Adia distributes beans that are harvested from the highly prized Bourbon Arabica varietal and also the rarefied SL28 varietal that was brought to Latin America in the early 1900’s from Kenya (namesake of the farm “Kilimanjaro”). “Something magical happens when the beans from these two varietals [are blended] together,” she says, though it was an accident that they formed a blend at all. El Salvador struggled to prop up its coffee industry during and shortly following its civil war, which formally ended in 1992. Coffee farms were abandoned and overgrown; the crumbled transportation infrastructure left few routes for the coffee beans to travel from farm to market. The occurrence of uprooting older, heirloom coffee trees and replanting with hybridized varietals is often ironic: during times of war and economic crisis, farmers leave their heirloom varietals in the ground because they can’t afford to replant with costly hybrids. Aida has committed to preserving the presence of her two heirloom varietals despite being able to afford replacing them, however. These older trees, some of which bear fruit for eight decades if well-tended, usually have more deeply established root systems and fewer budding nodes on their branches. What does that mean to those among us who might never see those twisted, grandfather plants on the coffee farms? Juicier coffee cherries, yielding a sweeter, more complex coffee bean.

Of course, the new hybrid coffee varietals yield more cherries per plant than those such as Bourbon and SL28, which is precisely why so many coffee growers in El Salvador think Aida is crazy. Converting derelict farms into sites of high-cost input organic coffee production, replacing older trees with still low-yielding varieties, spending years working towards organic certification: none of these practices follow the typical Salvadorian coffee growing mantra of quantity over quality.

Aida attended a Fair Trade information session back in 2002 but immediately realized that Fair Trade certification wasn’t going to work for her. She was considered to be too large of a landholder under their rules and was also reluctant to form a cooperative, a requirement for entering into the certification process. Despite the absence of Fair Trade certification, the employees who work on Aida’s farms (she employs up to 70 during the harvest season) are paid the highest wages of any coffee farmer in the country. So high, in fact, that coffee farms in the vicinity have had to increase wages after their workers found out that Aida was paying substantially more.

Besides the favorable economics behind Direct Trade (the processing mills she works with are also paid more than they ever have been), she believes in emphasizing the story behind the coffee rather than any specific adorning label. Duane Sorenson, founder and owner of Stumptown, remarked, “Some of the poorest farmers I’ve seen in my life were Fair Trade farmers. The cooperative managers were living well, but not the majority of the farmers. Some Fair Trade co-ops have good practices… but we don’t buy their coffee just because it’s Fair Trade.” He spoke also about having a visceral response to the working conditions on coffee farms, of being able to tell by showing up and meeting the farmers how the workers were treated, and then taking the stories of individual farmers back to coffee drinkers. Aida herself said she wonders why people would pay $3 for a cup of coffee (or $12.50 for 12 ounces of beans, which is what Stumptown sells her coffee for) if it doesn’t have a compelling story behind it.

There may still be a lot of “coffee miles” between farm and cup but never before have coffee drinkers and coffee growers been so connected. Sheldon Rosevear, a devout Stumptown customer, admitted that he cried at the first Stumptown “Meet the Producers” event earlier this year, which brought Panamanian coffee farmers to Portland and Seattle. “These events are the best examples of absolute globalism coupled with absolute localism that I’ve seen,” Sheldon said. “These farmers are so used to throwing their beans on the commodity market, they usually don’t even know where the beans go beyond five kilometers from their farms. When they visited some of the restaurants carrying Stumptown coffee they were just shocked to see that not only does the menu have Stumptown’s name printed on it but his name and his farm’s name too. Their eyes welled up when they saw that.”

A few attendees at the Seattle event were particularly interested in Aida’s employee practices, and asked her to elaborate on how she gets them to sort the coffee cherry into such precise piles according to ripeness. Aleco Chigounis, Stumptown’s globe-traveling coffee buyer, spoke up and told them how hands on he’s seen Aida be during his visits to her farms. She sorts the cherry alongside her workers, rolling up her sleeves to do all of the jobs she asks her employees to do. Duane agreed. “Aida’s blessed farms are in a special part of the world,” he explained, “but it hasn’t all fallen into her lap—she has to wake up every morning and bust ass. The only way you can get employees to respond to you is to pay well and be involved.” The back row, along with three-dozen other attendees, listened intently to their responses.  As it turned out, the back row had come on behalf of Starbucks.