After participating in the Fairtrade Climate Academy…

…coffee farmers in Machakos, Kenya had 20% more shade trees planted on their farms. Why does it matter? A (banana) bunch of reasons!

🍌 Farmers planted banana and avocado trees to provide shade to their coffee bushes. The fruits of these trees served as an additional (and diversified!) source of income.

🌍 Trees are natural carbon sinks—as they grow, they pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and use it to create their leaves, trunks and fruit. Their ability to store carbon is a real boon in light of accelerating climate change.

☀️ Direct sunlight burns and degrades exposed soil. When soil is depleted, farmers need to supplement with fertilizer or expand their areas of production into forested lands in order to maintain production levels. Both are short-term solutions with deleterious effects.

We are so delighted by the success of the initiative to plant shade trees! But it was only one element of the larger Climate Academy. Curious about what else it entailed?

April 17th National Banana Day!

We promised you banana jokes, and banana jokes you shall have:

Q: How does the banana answer the phone?
A: Yellow!

Q: Why was the monkey attracted to the banana?
A: The banana was so a-peeling!

Q: What is a banana’s favorite day of the week?
A: Sundae.

Q: What is a sheep’s fruit of choice?
A: Baaa-nana.

We love a good banana joke--but unfair trade is no laughing matter! And bananas-as-usual is undoubtedly unfair. Did you know that, on average, farmers only earn between 4 and 9% of the total value of bananas? Despite growing the crops that spur billions of profit on the global market, many banana workers still live in poverty. That is patently unjust, and it’s also unsustainable.

What to do about it? Pay a fairer and fuller price for the bananas you bring into your home! Did you know that Fairtrade has a compulsory base wage for banana workers? It’s calculated at 70% of the local living wage, and it supersedes any legal minimums that are lower. To further fill the gap towards a living wage, up to 50% of the Fairtrade Premium (an additional sum that workers earn when their bananas are sold on Fairtrade terms) can be dispersed as cash bonuses to workers.

When you buy Fairtrade bananas, you're helping to push for higher incomes, stronger rights and safer conditions for farmers and workers.

What We’re (Ethically) Consuming

• How are musicians supposed to survive on $0.00173 per stream? — Spoiler: most can’t. But there’s an idea in Congress to create a direct pathway for money to flow from streaming platforms directly to recording musicians.
• Students from around the world speak out against child labor — The students of Atlanta International School created short films about human trafficking for #MyFreedomDay. Their film festival was rounded out with Fairtrade chocolate from Tony's Chocolonely—and with coverage from CNN!
• This often-overlooked sea creature may be quietly protecting the planet's coral reefs — Corals are struggling—but where sea cucumber populations are strong, the mortality of corals is 15x less.