Supply chain disruptions have been in the news throughout the pandemic and you’ve probably personally experienced product shortages on your local grocery store shelves. The costs of doing business continue to climb for Equal Exchange and our producer partners at every step of the supply chain. At the writing of this letter, the cost of green coffee beans on the commodity market has continued to increase month after month as have transportation costs from farmers to Equal Exchange and from us to you.
We’re also doing this at a time when Equal Exchange and our farmer partners are facing unprecedented challenges due to climate change. As always, our focus is to create impact for farmers, consumers, and alternative traders for the long term. This context of uncertainty makes it exceptionally difficult to plan and make the right investments for the future, particularly for vulnerable farming communities.
We thank you for your continued support and understanding. Together, our collective direct supply chains are a lifeline to farming communities at this crucial time. Increased prices will enable our important work to continue. Equal Exchange pays farmer partners well above market prices, and expects to pay farmers even more this year. We will also continue to support additional farmer co-op investments and community projects beyond product purchases.
Here are some resources that may help with the transition:
• A recording of a workshop from the 2021 Equal Exchange Summit: Farmer Co-ops Amid Unprecedented Disruptions: How are They Faring? with Equal Exchange's coffee buyer Todd Caspersen,
• Request a virtual presentation from us for your congregation or community group.We’d be glad to visit you via Zoom and address the different challenges that Equal Exchange and farmers are facing at this time.
• Share some of our fair trade educational resources like videos, supply chain infographics and more in a newsletter, e-bulletin, or social media to explain the work that Equal Exchange is doing and what fair trade pricing means for farming families around the world.
• Here is a PDF of the new price list which will take effect on February 9th.
If there are other things that may be helpful to you please let us know and we’ll work with you to see how we can help in this transition. We are as committed as ever to transforming the food system, and we are grateful for your partnership in this work.
Join Us!
We invite you to join our growing community of citizen-consumers who are getting even more deeply involved in Equal Exchange.
We need consumer participation in our organization to build a deeply democratic trade system made up of farmers and their democratic organizations, workers and their democratic organization, and citizen-consumers who now have a democratic space in Equal Exchange as well as their own network. Join us in changing trade, together!
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