A Time for Treats

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Since this season is gift-giving time for many of us, it's warming to realize there are truly exotic foods we can give as presents that also are a gift to those who grow them. Coffee, tea, chocolate, nuts and spices can be purchased through groups who assure a living wage for the producers.

At our winter solstice bonfire, most of us celebrants bring hot coffee. Learning to feel OK about drinking coffee led me long ago to the best source for non-local treats: the Fair Trade movement, which connects producers in unindustrialized countries directly to consumers in the industrialized world. By cutting out exploitative middlemen, Fair-Traders can pay the farmers a livable wage for their products, even when the market price nosedives. I get my coffee by mail from Equal Exchange ( www.equalexchange.com ), a pioneer in the movement.

[MOTHER EARTH NEWS now distributes its own delicious coffee, which is triple-certified to be fairly traded, certified organic and shadegrown. See Page 9.]

I just learned about the unprocessed chocolate bits offered by One World Projects ( www.oneworldprojects.com ). These little snacks come from rainforest protecting cacao growers who are paid two to three times the local market price for their beans. Friends of the Third World is a pioneer cooperative trader of not only coffee, but tea, chai and other exotic beverages, chocolate from Ghana and cocoa powder from the Dominican Republic. They also offer organic cashews from a Honduran cooperative, Brazil nuts from Peru, a variety of tropical spices, and specialty foods from American Indian and other cooperatives right here in the United States. To learn more about other fair trade groups, contact Co-Op America; 1612 K Street NW, #600; Washington, DC 20006; (800) 584-7336; www.coopamerica.org . Co-op America's

National Green Pages can connect you to thousands of socially and environmentally responsible businesses ( www.greenpages.org ).

It's not only where our foods come from that counts—we waste way too much energy moving everything we eat around—it's how the foods are grown and whether their producers benefit. When we buy from local farmers, we help guarantee their livelihood. By learning where our distant treats come from, we can support Third World farmers as well.

For a limited time, MOTHER is offering a special price of $9.95 for the hardcover version of Joan Gussow's best-selling book, This Organic Life. See MOTHER's Bookshelf, Page 88.

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