Who pays when the price on the shelf doesn't cover the cost of growing the food? Brenda Huerta, Senior Advisor for Climate and Environment at Fairtrade International, joins Earthbound to talk about what a label on a banana can promise, what it can never promise, and why the farmers who contributed least to the climate crisis stand on the most exposed ground.

Brenda grew up in Mexico, where farming has long meant more than food production. From the milpa to cocoa agroforests in Ghana, she brings that view to her work translating between smallholder farmers and the companies that buy from them. She is also refreshingly honest about what a certification scheme can and can’t do.

In this episode:

• Milpa, the Green Revolution, and criticizing the system that feeds us
• How fair trade began, and why it treats poverty as a product of unfair trade
• Cooperatives, the Fairtrade Minimum Price, and the premium farmers spend as they choose
• Label fatigue, and why certification can’t fix a system-wide problem
• The adaptation finance gap facing smallholder farmers
• Europe’s deforestation and green claims rules, and who pays to comply
• Living income reference prices and the true cost of food
• Why the COP “year of implementation" never quite arrives
• Sankofa, dynamic agroforestry, and the future of cocoa

Ask Brenda what she loves most about her work, and she doesn’t cite a statistic. She says she knows, by first and last name, the farmers the work reaches. Somebody pays for that cheap banana. Knowing who is a start.

Links

• Fairtrade International: https://www.fairtrade.net
• Meet Brenda Huerta (Fairtrade International): https://www.fairtrade.net/en/get-involved/news/meet-brenda-huerta.html
• Fairtrade Risk Map: https://riskmap.fairtrade.net
• Fairtrade Living Income Reference Prices: https://www.fairtrade.net/en/why-fairtrade/why-we-do-it/decent-livelihoods/living-income/living-income-reference-prices.html
• Sankofa: dynamic agroforestry for cocoa in Ghana: https://www.fairtrade.net/en/get-involved/news/sankofa--improving-incomes-and-building-climate-resilience-throu.html
• FLOCERT, Fairtrade’s independent auditor: https://www.flocert.net
• NDC Partnership: https://ndcpartnership.org
• Climate Policy Initiative, Global Landscape of Climate Finance 2025: https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/global-landscape-of-climate-finance-2025/
• Related Earthbound: Somebody Should Do Something (individual action vs. systemic change): https://www.earthboundpodcast.com/individual-action-vs-systemic-change/
• Earthbound: https://www.earthboundpodcast.com
• Global Warming Is Real: https://globalwarmingisreal.com

Earthbound, the podcast helping people like you who feel anxious about climate change challenge the narratives that feel overwhelmed and reconnect with the natural world to help you stay grounded in what you're protecting rather than consumed by what's being lost.

Who pays when the price on the shelf doesn't cover the cost of growing the food?

What can a label on a banana promise?

And what can it never promise?

And why do the people who contributed least to the climate crisis stand on its most exposed?

In this episode of Earthbound, I talk with Brenda Huerta, Senior Advisor for Climate and Environment at Fair Trade International, based in Bonn, Germany.

Huerta grew up in Mexico, where she trained as a sustainable development engineer and began her career in the food industry.

From Mexico, she moved to Washington, D.C. to work with United nations entities in the NDC partnership.

And you can learn more about the the NDC Partnership, which stands for nationally determined contributions in the show notes.

After dc, it was on to Bonn for a master's degree in agricultural sciences and resource management.

And Brenda's job now is kind of a translation.

She turns producers needs into value buyers understand and what buyers demand into something that actually helps producers.

Think of it as kind of a circularity.

But Huerte's journey didn't start with the policy.

It started with the corn.

Growing up in Mexico, she absorbed a view of farming as more than food production.

For the Maya and the Mexica, agriculture is the nexus of nature, spirituality and human survival.

In the Maya creation story, the Popol Vuh people are made of maize, and the milpa, maize, beans and squash grown together is about as good as ecological engineering gets.

Maize provides structure, beans fix nitrogen, and squash protects the soil.

Milpas grow on the chinapas, the highly productive floating gardens on the lakes of the Valley of Mexico.

For the Mexica, milpa carries a profound meaning, interdependence.

Nothing grows alone.

There's a good chance that right now, sitting patiently in your kitchen, is a banana or a bag of coffee, or a bar of chocolate or a box of tea.

Somewhere on any of these common agricultural goods, you might find a small seal on the package, a promise printed in ink.

Fair Trade.

What does that seal actually promise?

Who checks?

And why, in the middle of a climate crisis, should a label on a banana earn your attention?

What difference can it make?

Because the banana, coffee or tea is where our biggest abstractions like climate trade, supply chains and food land on a single person, a farmer with two hectares of land, give or take, trying to make a living from what grows there.

In a climate that no longer behaves.

As I reiterate in the interview, I'm quick to criticize industrial agriculture.

It pulled farming away from systems that once answered to their ecosystems and bent it toward extraction, synthetic fertilizer, water and land spent faster than the earth can replace them.

I know the cost.

I've named them often over my years of environmental advocacy.

But with all that said, it isn't lost in me that I'm probably alive because of it.

The high yield wheat behind the green revolution was bred in Mexico and is credited with keeping famine from a billion people and my own existence quietly among them.

So I criticize the very thing that made me.

This is a cognitive dissonance that I don't get to resolve, and neither does Brenda.

She holds both truths at once, and that honesty is where this conversation starts.

Fair trade begins with a question that sounded crazy when it was first asked what if we are creating poverty, not failing to cure it, but creating it?

The answer was that producer poverty is no accident.

Colonial trade pushed countries to grow raw commodities while richer countries captured value through processing, branding and retail.

Follow the money and it all flows upstream.

Fair trade tries to bring a little of it back down.

We get into how that works the cooperatives, the minimum price that acts as a floor when markets collapse, and the premium that farmers themselves decide how to spend on schools, on infrastructure, on better practices.

Brenda doesn't oversell it.

Ask about label fatigue and consumer cynicism.

She doesn't defend the seal so much as place it in context.

She says plainly that a certification scheme cannot fix a system wide problem, and that the criticism of schemes like hers has value and the stakes are not abstract.

Smallholder farmers have contributed the least to global emissions, yet they face some of the greatest exposure to their effects shifting weather, pests, disease, failing soils.

Meanwhile, climate finance flows overwhelmingly toward cutting emissions.

By the most recent Climate Policy Initiative count, adaptation gets a few cents for every dollar that goes to mitigation.

When a farm fails despite doing everything right, the farmer leaves the land for the city and the problem becomes everyone's.

Then there's the paperwork of virtue.

Europe's new rules on green claims took effect at the end of September, and its deforestation regulation is due at the end of this year.

Brenda supports both, but proving that your 2 hectares weren't cleared after 2020 with geolocation data, satellite checks, and legality assessments cost money that farm farmers don't have.

Good law, she says, but with a price tag.

The question is, who pays?

It's the same question the banana asks, just with better Documentation we've grown used to prices that don't cover the cost of growing the food.

And someone always absorbs the difference.

Often, as Brenda puts it, that someone is a farmer.

We also talk about the COP process, the annual UN climate meetings, and why every year build is the year of implementation never quite is a view she warned might ruffle a few of her former colleagues.

And we finish our chat with a project close to her heart called Senkofa, which teaches farmers to grow coca inside a diverse multi layered agroforest instead of a monoculture.

And what she loves most about this work.

I've spent many years listening to people talk about the climate and billions of tons and trillions of dollars.

And it's a relief to talk to someone who can bring it down to real people making their way in an increasingly difficult environment putting a name to the farmer, maybe the farmer who grew that banana you'll have for lunch.

Here is my conversation with Brenda Huerta.

Brenda Huerta, thanks for your time today for being on Earthbound.

You are the senior advisor for Climate Environment Climate and Environment for Fair Trade International, is that correct?

Yes, that's correct.

So tell me how you got to your position, your experience.

You grew up born in Mexico and my notes say that you have a Master's degree in Agricultural Science and Resource Management and a bachelor's in Environment and Sustainable Development Engineering.

So that all sounds very impressive.

So why don't you tell me your story, how you got interested in the work of Fair trade and your experience.

Obviously you have some expertise.

Why don't you give me some background and tell the listeners your experience and your work and your motivation.

Sure.

Thank you and thanks a lot for having me.

It's an honor.

I heard it.

I've heard a few of your episodes, so I'm really excited to be able to be here with you and share.

Yeah, so my career starts with my sustainable engineering training in Mexico.

I actually started working at Pepsi Mexico Foods for a while.

Very short lived career in.

I discovered really quickly that I wanted to pursue a career in development sustainability.

So I moved to Washington D.C. where I started working for different UN entities and projects.

I just UN adjacent projects and organizations.

So yeah, it was for a long time in the partnership between the UN FCCC and several development partners called the NC Partnership where we mobilized resources and know how for developing countries to develop and then implement their NDCs which are the nationally determined contributions which are basically the country's commitments to the and from there I moved to Bonn, Germany to get my Master's in agricultural sciences and resource management in the tropics and subtrop.

It's a mouthful.

Yeah.

From there I started moving to different places like the UN universities, Sustainable Agriculture Consulting, a climate policy consulting firm, and I ended up in Fair Trade.

So my admiration and love for agriculture and smallholder farmers is not very aligned with this career path.

It's been more so because of growing up in Mexico.

I think I grew up with a deep appreciation for the richness of cultures that understand.

Other students still understand farming as more than just food production.

You know, in certain civilizations, such as the Mayans, the Mexicas, agriculture lives at the meeting point of nature, of spirituality and of human survival, basically.

So, yeah, they understand farming as more than food production.

For example, the Mayans of the Mexicas view maize as part of humans.

They thought we were made of maize.

The word in navigable means sustenance and origin at the same time.

So agriculture is more part of like nature and the connection between humans and nature, most of Mexican cultures and civilizations.

So I think this just.

I don't know, it's a beautiful connection, you know, I feel it's.

Yeah.

So is it Milpa?

Milpa, yes.

That's a beautiful example too.

Why don't you explain what that is?

Yes.

So milpa is actually like a multi crop system.

They would grow maize, beans and squash together.

And basically on one level, like on the ecological level, it's brilliant knowledge because the maize gives structure, the beans feeds nitrogen, the squash protects the soil.

But for them.

So malpas were growing in the Chinampas in the Valle of Mexico, which are these floating gardens that were super highly productive agricultural systems on the lakes over the Valley of Mexico.

But for the Mexicans, they also meant interdependence.

Nothing grows alone.

So it was a highly advanced agricultural system long before they knew it.

Yeah, yeah.

It seems that what you've been talking about here is the connection, spiritual nature of agriculture and understanding like the Milpa, that we've understood sustainable agriculture for many years.

And then I guess fossil fuels got involved and it became industrial and the whole mindset shifted.

So it would food production as just another means of production as opposed to actually being connected to the land.

So it seems like industrial agriculture just exhausts the land eventually without.

Yeah.

So go ahead, go ahead.

What do you think?

Oh, sorry.

Yeah.

So actually I think there's two important parts there.

One of them is actually why I love Fair Trade.

But this first part that you're talking about, Tom, I think it's very related to the green Revolution.

No, and it on one side it brought a lot of benefits.

That's true.

Because it developed not wheat, but the high yield varieties were developed.

Disease resistant varieties, mostly of wheat at the beginning were developed in Mexico.

But then also we moved away from these systems, agricultural systems that were connected to the ecosystems that were responding to their environments.

And we shifted towards this exploitation of the resources and overuse of fertilizers, overuse of water, irrigation systems.

So that kind of connection that we were talking about with nature, it's a spiritual way of weaving.

Yeah.

Got shifted and.

Yeah.

And I do think that's important because it feeds the world.

No, the green team came because of the need.

Yeah, it's true.

I don't want to.

I do that sometimes I integrate like industrial farming and I am alive probably because of it.

And same thing with all sorts of, you know, the industrial revolution and all these things.

It's important to look at both sides.

And I don't want to say that the green revolution or industrial farming is all bad because it does feed the world.

But I think getting back to fair trade, what fair trade does is the smallholder farmers do understand these more ancient sustainable systems.

They're on the front lines of climate change and it seems like they're at the bottom of the economic juggernaut.

So let's talk about the smallholder farmer.

First off, let's define what a smallholder farmer is in terms of fair trade.

Sure.

And no, I agree, I think there's many nuances but we actually.

I just want to make a quick note here because I think it's important to mention that fair trade comes from the notion of understanding that poverty is not a lack of elite, but a result of unfair trade.

And the result is poverty of smallholder farmers and marginalized producers.

But this is why I love for trade, not the history of how it became a movement, political movement connected to anti colonialism.

So yeah, I can go on forever there.

But so small collar farmers are farmers that have basically farms close to or smaller than 2 hectares.

So these are very small farms and they actually hold a lot of the food production of the world.

I think it's 70 to 80% of all products comes from smallholder farmers, which is a lot.

Yeah, yeah.

So in terms of fur trade, we work with small for holder farmers through cooperatives, basically.

So fair trade system has different stakeholders.

We have the producer networks which are a, in the three different largest regions that we work with, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and then Asia and the Pacific.

And these are the producer Networks that are in direct contact and supporting the cooperatives.

And a cooperative is basically a group of smallholder farmers.

And I think this is one of the key elements of fur trade because it allows smallholder farmers to identify and tackle individual challenges through a collective movement.

Okay.

Fair trade.

There's a smallholder farmer will band together with other smallholder farmers to create a cooperative in the regions that you work in.

And so how, say a group of smallholder farmers in Latin America somewhere, and they want to get in, they want to work together, be a cooperative.

How do they get involved with fair trade?

How does fair trade work?

How does a farmer get involved with the fair trade network?

Right, so we.

Okay, so we have the producer networks.

No.

Which are the ones that are in touch with the cooperatives.

And basically we're a certification scheme.

And what that means is that we help the cooperatives ensure pricing, ensure a set of strict production standards and encourage farmers from these cooperatives for better.

Or.

Yeah, better bargaining power, basically, and collaborative work.

So we work through a set of standards that they have to comply with.

And then basically we have the rest of the stakeholders, which are Fair Trade International, which is where I work, that like the center, that negotiate the bridge between the producer Networks and the NFOs, which are the national fair trade organizations, which certify the commercial partners.

Okay, so you have the traders.

I'm sorry, I didn't interrupt.

Certification at both ends, the producers and the commercial.

The push in the pole.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So basically, when you go to the store and you see a banana with a little seal, that's Fair Trade certified.

That means that the whole supply chain from the farm to the store is Fair Trade certified, which means they operate under the standards that we have set.

And these standards help us ensure that producers are reaching sustainable livelihoods through different things.

For example, we have the minimum living income.

Sorry, we have a living income set.

We have the fair trade premium.

We have minimum price, which are all mechanisms to ensure they get paid fairly for their products.

So, for example, fair treatment price is like the safety net.

If the market prices fall below the minimum price, we ensure that the producers are paid at least that minimum price.

I was going to.

How is a minimum price determined?

Is it.

I assume it varies for the region based on the local economics or how is it a minimum price determined?

So it's a whole.

I'm sure it's complicated.

Yeah, it's very complicated.

Yeah.

I.

To be honest, I'm not the expert on minimum price.

On pricing.

There's like a whole pricing unit but it has to do as well with that.

So we have another thing that's called income reference prices, leaning income reference prices, which are designed to estimate what price a farmer needs to earn a decent standard of living, including food, housing, education, healthcare and savings.

So it's not the same actually in cases we realize that the whole supply chain makes the price way too high.

But in many cases we.

There's, you know, the cases, there's a whole bunch of studies that go.

That undergo surveys with the producers understanding their living situation, depending on the region to make sure that the living income is set and it's the state net, basically.

And then we have the premium which is an additional, an extra that they pay when they sell fair trade, their presence under fair trade terms.

And this premium is an additional that goes to the cooperative and then it gets spent as they want in a democratic way to promote sustainable practices.

To promote sustainable practices, to promote building of schools, building up infrastructure needed in the communities.

So we, to support the community.

So that money, the premium, it goes to the cooperative, the larger cooperative.

Is there any oversight of how that they can spin it as they see fit?

Yeah, they do.

So we do have certain recommendations, let's say, and case studies that we share with them and experiences with different cooperatives that have been very successful.

But one of the pillars of fair trade is that everything is farmer led and producer centric.

So they know better than us how they were going to spend their premium.

So in a sense, fair trade is trying to give the power in the economic system.

It seems like the power would be with me, the guy going to Trader Joe's or something and buying some coffee off the shelf is trying to shift that power to the producer.

Or is that right?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So this is the other part that I was telling you about why I love fur trade.

Do you know the story of how fur trade began?

Actually, no, and I'm sure my listeners would love to hear that too.

So how did it start?

I want to do a very short story because I can tell, I can talk about this for hours.

I love it.

But basically it began in the 60s and 70s with a group, mostly religious organizations across Europe and North America that started asking this crazy question.

What is poverty?

Is what we're creating poverty basically as a result of under trade.

So they began starting to work directly with marginalized producers and artisans.

They began this idea of direct trading with them.

And then by the 60s or 70s it was already like a.

More like a political movement.

It traveled through more countries and it started to get connected to this anti colonial movement to solidarity with newly independent countries and the criticism of multinational corporations.

So I love this part because it was born from the recognition that colonialism had shaped global markets and that many countries were being pushed to producing raw commodities while the wealthier countries captured more of the value processing to branding, retail.

Yeah, because the supply chain, from a smaller farmer growing his coffee beans or bananas in his few acres, from there to the store, there's so many people trying to grab a little bit of the cash.

And so it seems the way it's set up that the person that produced that banana is all the money is going up upstream somewhere.

So we're probably trying to bring that back downstream a little bit.

Exactly.

So let's talk about what the smallholder farmer is up against.

There's the economics and then there's the climate.

So let's talk about climate change a little bit and how they're being affected.

I've always thought that people in agriculture, especially in this situation, smallholder farmers, they're the ones are living climate change every day.

So what are they up against?

Fair trade started in the 60s and 70s and now we're in the 2000s.

And I've been writing about climate change for a couple 20 years or so.

And what's disturbing to me is how little has happened in that period of time.

So can you speak to climate change?

What specifically?

Like what does a smallholder farmer, what are they up against as far as trying to grow their crops, even right now?

Yeah, sure.

And this is super important.

So I think you're the expert that's been writing, I don't have to say it to you, but like this big disparity between climate finance and I want to start there, between what's been resourced to adaptation and mitigation.

And this comes back to this conversation of the way the markets are shaped or where the resources move to.

So basically mitigation receives like don't quote me because I don't remember exactly, but like 90% it's not resources.

The vast majority is mitigation.

Yeah.

So adaptation is receiving very little.

And the countries that need the most resources for mitigation are the countries that are producing most of the food, basically.

So basically farmers, small polar farmers are at the forefront of climate change.

Stingley have contributed the least global emissions, but they are often the most affected.

They are experiencing a series of issues.

Increasing diseases, decreasing crop yields, soil erosion, pests, changing weather patterns.

All of this impacts their work, their livelihoods.

Some studies predict even that by 2050, coffee, cocoa, tea, cotton, the commodities that we work with will be so severely affected that production in some areas will even disappear.

And right now environmental pressures are only increasing and the finance to adaptation is not flowing.

So we try to address these challenges.

But yeah, what do you do?

What if a smallholder farmer that's doing good work and it's in a cooperative, in a network and doing everything right, but climate change just devastates their livelihood, what do they do?

Where do they.

In reality, this is not a series of challenges that are that for me, it's important that we understand that we as fern trade cannot solve, that farmers cannot solve.

It's a system wide solution that we need.

Because what happens to those smallholder farmers?

They migrate to the cities, they leave the field, they look for other jobs.

We're talking about a climate, migration patterns.

Yeah.

So this is a starting point of a series of social challenges.

In a better world, there's no such thing as a perfect world.

But in a better world, given where we are right now, what would you see as what we need to do to really wrap our arms around this problem and start making a difference?

What would you see?

What kind of changes would you like to see?

It's a series of changes.

First of all, I think something that is very important and that I've learned a lot in this job is a consumer responsibility.

It does start there.

We do have a power and a responsibility when we purchase anything at all.

We are responsible for what happens to the supply chain that is giving you that, that is bringing this product to you.

So being informed consumers is always a good start.

And then I would say the policy side, working with policy, with climate change policy.

I do realize the importance of having incentives, not as international organizations, but also at a government level in countries.

Incentives that kill the markets, the private sector.

Invest in adaptation, invest in long term planning.

Yeah, long term planning.

But I think, yeah, yeah, good luck.

But I think it's a matter also of being informed and advocating for producers.

At all in consumers.

I agree about consumer responsibility.

I also wonder fair trade is a legitimate label for consumers.

They can trust fair trade.

But there are so many other organic and these labels that.

So I can see a consumer being confused and even start to become cynical about the whole thing.

None of this means anything anyway.

How do you overcome that?

Yeah, no, it is a challenge.

I see there's value also in the criticism to certification schemes.

It's not perfect.

And this takes me back to what I was speaking about before.

You cannot expect certification schemes to solve A system wide problem.

I think it's a first point that a consumer needs to understand.

Second, yes, there are different certification schemes have different objectives and fair trade was built over this core idea to produce fair trade to produce sustainable livelihoods.

And that includes environment.

Organic certification, for example, is built on the idea that holder farmers will be able to produce organic, which in many cases is not very realistic in my opinion.

Yeah, same with regenerative agriculture.

These principles are very noble to the ecosystems.

These principles are very accurate in terms of what's best for the environment.

But I think it's a balance of who you're expecting to be able to comply with these certification schemes.

Know how are you auditing these certification schemes?

Who can actually finance the compliance?

And in many cases it's not smallholder farmers.

So we work under instead of bridging agriculture or organic.

So explain as agroecology, you said, can you explain that a little bit what that is?

Yes, yeah.

So it is, it's also agriculture framework, let's say as regenerative or organic.

It's not a set of practices, it's a set of principles.

And I think it answers the question how do we produce food in a way that works with nature but also strengthens the people in the communities producing that.

So the foundation comes from a few scholars.

One of them, that's the one that we follow is Gleisman, Stephen Gleisman, and he describes agroecology as a science, a set of practices and a movement.

So the biggest contribution is that it happens at different levels and it starts in the ground, in the soil, like regenerative agriculture and organic, but it ends at a food system level, reforming the whole system.

And then you work with principles instead of practices.

Okay, okay.

And as far as the certification is, it's flowcert.

Is that the certification mechanism that.

Yeah.

So flowstart is our audit, basically.

Yeah.

So they are the ones that audit the producers.

They do cycles of auditing that are anonymous.

No, sorry, not anonymous.

They do cycles of auditing that are.

So somebody just might show up like unannounced here.

I'm here to audit your farm.

Yes, exactly.

And then so they audit the requirements that are part of the standard.

They have to make sure that the cooperatives are compliant.

So are the certification.

I imagine there's a baseline, but does it varies amongst the cooperatives exactly what they're being audited for?

That's actually a very interesting question because we are right now changing the way that audits are managed.

So we're moving towards a Risk Based approach, it's called.

And this works because it basically selects which requirements should be applied to which farmers depending on their risk level.

So we had a risk Matt that's been a big part of my work so far in which we identify levels of risk in many categories, social, economic and social.

In different.

All of the countries that we work in.

And then through other tools, basically we identify which producers have the highest risk of some of the areas of all of the areas.

And that way we avoid burden.

We avoid then having to.

If you're.

Or if you're organic certified, you don't have to the requirements that apply to hazardous materials but not apply to you because you're organic.

I see.

So that way we are removing the burden from you, from the things that don't apply to you.

But then, yeah, auditing what matters.

That makes perfect sense.

Yeah.

Might have more say, risk and a social aspect as opposed to what are some of the.

Speaking of social.

When you're auditing, you're auditing a producer, I assume you're auditing their process of producing food.

What others?

In a cooperative, in a producer network.

You're auditing the producer network as well as the cooperative.

So it goes from the farmer, the cooperative, the network.

Is that audits and all those stages?

No.

So the producer networks are part of Fair trade.

I see.

Okay.

They are Fair Trade Africa Trade Asia Pacific and Fair Trade Latin America and the Caribbean.

And these are the teams within Fair trade that are supporting, working with the producers, hand in hand with the cooperatives to help them meet the standards, but also implement projects on our forestry or moving to use less fertilizers, pesticides and support.

What gets audited are the cooperatives and the producers that are part of that cooperatives.

And so your work are.

You are.

Are you're overseeing the producer.

The.

Yeah, the producer networks, is that correct or what?

Yeah, what actually, what do you do?

What is your.

You get.

What is your day like?

And Fair trade.

What is my day like?

Oh my God.

So it's.

It was one of my first questions when I started, actually.

Like, how is it.

Who is.

How is the dynamic between the producer Networks and the NFLs, which are the.

The national fair trade organizations?

Fair Trade Germany, Fair Trade Belgium, Fair Trade America.

My job basically to translate the producer meat into commercial value for the commercial partners and also translate the commercial interests into added value for the producers.

Okay, that's interesting.

How do you added value to the producers?

How does that work?

Can I give you an example?

Okay.

A lot of my work Right now has to do with the eudr, which is a legislation in the European Union, the European Union deforestation regulation.

And it's basically ensuring that certain products that come to Europe are not coming from area with deforestation past a cutoff date, which is December 25th.

Now this has brought a lot of burden to producers because they need to comply the set of requirements to be able to prove that they are deforestation free as of December 2020.

And it's great, we love the legislation.

We're completely in favor of halting deforestation, of working with producers to prevent further deforestation mitigation programs and so forth.

But the reality on the ground is that it costs them a lot.

I can see.

So how do we translate the need of a partner, of a commercial partner of a store in Europe to added value to producers?

We help them understand how to capture their geolocation data because their area is reviewed with GPS satellite imaging to make sure that this is how they make sure that the code of date has been complied with.

They need to have legality assessment to make sure that they own the land that they're producing or they have a legal stance to be in that land.

They had to do a bunch of legal and risk assessments.

How do we help them do that?

Basically, and we help them get their geolocation data, we work with partner that does the geospatial imaging assessment for the producers to make sure that they have the report that's ready for their buyers.

And say, you can enter my cocoa.

To the European okay, so in, in this case you're adding value to the producers by helping them comply with this legislation so they can present that to a commercial buyer, say here, I've done this, here's my data and here's whatever they need, here's my information.

And so the commercial producer, the commercial buyer understands the value of this producer because they've, they're complying with the deforestation legislation.

And yeah, I mean it gives a market access, market access, because otherwise they can't really enter the European market.

It gives them also, for example, with this geolocation data that we're gathering, we are starting to look at what are the land exchange emissions, what else can we do with this data?

An on time analysis of disaster risk, natural disasters risk.

So we really tried to work with them to understand how these requirements from the commercial side can be translated into something that's of value to them.

And so somebody buys a fair trade product in a store, there's the minimum price for the producer and then there's the premium for the cooperative.

How is that monitored that the money, how do we make sure that money gets to where it should go?

Flowstor also audits transactions with the copier.

Yeah, it's all very standardized, it's all very well audited.

And I think this is one of the things that has really showed fair trade maintain its certification scheme credibility because everything's public, everything's audited, it's transparent.

Is trend just in general and non fair trade certification schemes.

Is transparency an issue?

Is you say something is sustainably produced and I'm not talking about fair trade, but how do we know that?

Yeah, depends on where you live.

So yeah, it's really very regulated In Europe specifically there's this new regulation called mgro, the empower consumer that really it limits the claims in packaging that you can do and the claims that we can do as a certification.

So there has to be very well documented.

You had to have a very well documented process and proof of what you're actually claiming.

My experience for example, in the US market is a little bit different.

There's a bit more wiggle room to what you can claim.

I was going to ask you about the US I had a feeling it wasn't quite as rigorous as other places.

Yeah, and that's a challenge to be honest with other certification schemes.

And it also makes consumers skeptical for fair trade and for all of them.

And I think that's a good skepticism.

It's like we were saying, you're responsible for what you're buying.

You want to make sure that there's traceability, that there's transparency in if you're paying extra for a product that claims to be sustainably produced, that claims to be organic, that claims to be fair trade.

But it is definitely a challenge in the market.

And it seems to me we're talking about paying extra.

And I understand that there's the premium and the minimum price, but in another sense you can think about that's just what it costs to produce this and if we're paying less, there's a disparity there.

We're not really paying for the cost of producing the food.

I think that might be an issue with people that expect this low price, but it's not really the price.

Does that make sense?

No, completely.

And you're completely right.

I think the a big problem with the food systems is not even lack of wood, but it's the system distribution of risk and of value.

And yeah, often we try to buy the cheapest product, but someone's paying for that product.

And in many cases it's a small polar farmer.

Yeah.

Again it gets the economic disparity, the costs.

If we're not paying the full cost for something, that cost is going to go down downstream to the person that produced it.

And it seemed like you mentioned there's plenty of food and I've heard there's, we can feed the world no problem.

It's just there's problems in distribution and food waste and does fair trade address, can it.

Is it even possible to address any of that, Any of these other issues like distribution and I don't know, food waste, I don't know what you could actually do about that.

But is there anything that fur trade can do to help alleviate those things?

I understand if not, you got plenty.

On your plate, but yeah, so no, there's problems in many or challenges in all through that supply chain.

And I think food waste a challenge that's more on the side of consumer.

The consumer.

Yeah.

What we do, I think was what I was mentioning before, the living income reference price, which is designed to estimate what price the banana should cost so that the producer has a decent standard of living, including housing, food, education, healthcare, savings.

And I think that's a good eye opener for the food waste problem because if you paid what the banana would really cause for the producer to have a decent livelihood, you would not waste.

Yeah, indeed.

Yeah.

It becomes when things are so cheap, it in the mind, I think maybe in our minds it becomes less valuable somehow.

And I also wanted to address, hopefully by the time this airs things will have alleviated a little bit as far as global supply chains.

So right now there's the war in Iran and what's going on there.

And so fuel prices are going up and how does that impacting a smallholder farmer who wants to get his product to market.

And now transportation costs have gone up.

And how does fair trade respond to something, some global issue like this?

Yeah, it is.

It hits all supply chains and we see it.

I see it in the grocery store.

You see it in the grocery store.

Also see it in the way the negotiations go in the way they are.

They have access to different markets.

And I think here's where fair trade tries also to work a lot with the commercial side.

I think it's important to recognize that all of these changes and challenges in the food system don't happen in isolation, but commercial partners, companies, traders, brands, retailers are a crucial part of that and have a big responsibility.

And many companies working with fair trade are not just passively certified.

They increasingly engage in long Term sourcing relationships, which is super important.

To mitigate this challenges, they co invest in supply chains and they try to address some of these structural issues that we're talking about, including increased implants in the supply chain.

Yeah.

So, yeah, for example, just when companies commit to fair trade, they are agreeing to pay a minimum price even if the market collapses.

That's a very good start when there's many companies that are willing and those work with us.

So it's set up to respond to the vagaries of the market and global events.

Exactly, yeah.

Of the market, of global events, and also of environmental challenges, of adaptation challenges.

You see also companies supporting climate adaptation projects, agroforestry systems, investing in productivity improvements.

So it becomes a very collaborative, transformative space that's really worth fighting for.

Yeah, yeah.

Pivoting back quick to climate change adaptation, we discussed how adaptation kind of gets a short shrift.

Do you see that there's more attention now being paid now that we're seeing what's happening with climate change and realizing that while we certainly do need to mitigate, I think that we missed the boat there where we could get the most impact from mitigation.

So we now focus on that.

My question is, do you see more interest in adaptation?

Adaptation Wherever people understanding that adaptation is where we're at right now, we need to adapt.

Yeah.

I don't know if this happens to you, Tom, but I feel like I live in a bubble where everyone cares about adaptation because that's what I talk about all day.

But what I do know is, for example, last cop in Brazil, Cop 30, had a big focus on adaptation, specifically for agriculture.

We do see more the use of AI, the use of geospatial systems and companies with these technologies or with access to these technologies, putting them to the service of adaptation.

So I do think there's a shift whether it's big enough and fast enough.

Yeah, I don't know.

I hope so.

Just what I was.

I went to two cops, 15 and 21.

I was a cop, 21, which is.

Which was great.

That was like the high mark.

What is your.

What are your.

Just generally, I won't load the question.

What do you think about the COP process right now?

Yeah, I'm gonna.

I'm gonna create some controversy with my Vietnamese colleagues.

No, I think it's very well intentioned.

I think it's long overdue for a system shift.

I think cops were created to produce diplomatic relationships to start negotiations, not for implementation.

Because every year we hear this is a year of implementation.

This is A year of implementation, but it's never the year of implementation.

It stays at a level of this diplomatic engagement and negotiations and planning, which is very important.

But I think we're past that by now.

I agree.

And unfortunately, at least right now, the US isn't even involved and we're the elephant in the room.

Not in the room.

The elephant that, yeah, we're not in the room, which is disappointing.

And I, yeah, that's a, that's an excellent way to put it.

I think it's just a lot of intention and no implementation.

I Remember back in 2015 in Paris, we were talking, we got, we have this now.

It's, we have to ratchet up ambitions.

And I've been hearing that phrase for the past, what is it, almost 11 years now, still need to ratchet up those ambitions.

Can you give me an example of a project that maybe is dear to your heart as far as smallholder farmer?

Yeah, sure.

So we're working on a project called Sankofa with a series of different stakeholders where we're trying to implement or implementing dynamic agroforestry systems for cacao produce, cocoa producers.

And a dynamic agroforestry system is different from an agroforestry system because one is more challenging to implement, but because it tries to mimic the natural ecosystem as much as possible of the environment where the farm is basically it's in its pilot stages, I would say still we have very good results.

Sometimes, sometimes we need to adapt, we need to learn a lot.

And it's the system wide learning, it's a producer's learning, it's a cooperative learning, it's a PN's learning, it's OLSE learning.

I think the important thing is that we've managed to engage a large set of stakeholders at different levels with one objective that is producing cocoa through an agroforestry system that is actually not damaging, but returning something to the ecosystem and therefore it's sustaining livelihoods, it's ensuring a long term farming for the producers, it's capturing emissions, it's diversifying income because it's different trees of different fruits.

So yeah, the agroforestry projects that we have are really close to my heart and I hope someday we can have all of the cocoa and coffee farms be agroforestry systems.

It's very expensive though.

But it's interesting, the cost, we talk about the cost of things, but if we didn't do this, the cost would be greater down the line if it was even available.

Coffee could disappear.

Coca I think that's a lot of things that consumers like here in the US or in the West.

Don't we just always assume it's going to be there on the shelves?

We got a wake up call with the pandemic, but we still just assume.

And maybe not even on the shelves.

Maybe we just order it on Amazon and it shows up in a box.

Gets back to the consumer responsibility.

But I think also the consumer's up against this.

Just order on Amazon and it'll show up in a box in the front door.

And that's very convenient, but it's also very expensive and we're not really paying for it anyway.

That's just my hope.

No, but 100% and it is.

The risk is bigger than we think.

Massive cropping systems with no agroforestry at all, far away from biodiversity, don't have pollinators.

This is important.

We can run out of cocoa and coffee.

It's real.

And many other commodities that we are used to getting super cheap at the reach of our hand basically.

So yeah, I think a good wake up call would be to look at the living income reference price and see, you know, what is the real cost of that product.

Yeah, I think that, that.

So is there this Fair trade have on their website, on your website, do you have places that a consumer can go to learn more about this?

So yes, there's extensive learning material in the Fair Trade website.

There's the material per country both on the commercial and on the producer side.

And then we have the risk map which I also would encourage stick culture because there you can see the biggest risks, a social environment, economic per country that producers face.

I think that's important to don't have to go down a rabbit hole too far but just to educate ourselves a little bit about what it is that.

Well, all the things that I have my cup of coffee here and if I don't have my cup of coffee in the morning, I'm upset.

So to understand how that got here, how this cup of coffee got here just a little bit, I think that would be a big step in maybe giving the market an incentive for a fair trade market completely.

So to, to wrap it up, what are some of your biggest frustrations and what are some of your biggest hopes and what do you love most about your work?

That's a very nice question.

Biggest frustrations, I would say the disconnect between true needs on the ground and what legislation requires basically because I was talking about political incentives before for the market.

But I think there's A big disconnect there for producers.

We know when we talk about adaptation practices, when we talk about agroforestry systems, there is no policy incentive for anyone to invest in these systems.

So we go around with very well intentioned commercial partners and with funds, with more funding.

But that's not sustainable.

Right.

So that's one of my biggest frustrations.

What I love most about my job is that I can track with like name and last name where we're making impact.

Yeah, yeah.

That must be exciting to actually we talk the abstract, but to see somebody, their farm and their the impact that fair trade has on their lives, that must be very gratifying.

Yeah, it is.

It's been a great conversation.

I really hope that people will look for fair trade and understand the fair trade, support the producers that bring us our products that we use every day.

It's important.

Yes.

Thank you, Tom.

Thank you so much.

And yeah, this was very enjoyable for me.

And I also hope that people pay attention and become more responsible to what's happening behind the food that they're consuming.

We're open.

That's true.

We can't change a system until we know what needs to change.

We assume that we can eat that banana, enjoy a morning coffee, partake of an afternoon tea or chocolate bar, whenever and wherever we'd like without considering the true cost or what it took to land those foods and beverages on our table.

And that is an assumption we can't take for granted.

We enjoy the fruits and that's literally if you're eating that banana.

Of small holder farmers half a world away, living at the mercy of so many forces pushing down on the one hand, but next to the land on the other.

At the nexus of nature, spirituality and survival.

And this is where our food comes from.

Ask what she loves most about her work and Brenda didn't mention a policy win or a statistic.

It's knowing the name of the people in the communities where fair trade is making an impact.

After all the talk of supply chains, regulations and climate finance, it comes down to people working the land, bringing you and I the foods we enjoy every day, even as the larger world presses in.

Which is the fair answer to that cheap banana?

Somebody pays for it.

A label can't change that on its own and Brenda is the first to say so.

But a floor on the price, a say in how the money is spent and a buyer willing to look at the whole chain is a start.

And that start begins with you and me.

The next time we turn over that package and wonder who's on the other end of it, a farmer doing their best in an increasingly difficult world.

Brenda mentioned Fair Trade's risk map, which is public and which she incurred listeners to explore, and you'll find that, along with other links from our conversation in the show notes.

Thanks for listening.

I'm Thomas Schuenemann and this is Earthbound Stories from the Anthropocene Life on a Warming Planet.

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating and review wherever you listen.

It genuinely helps others find the show.

And if you haven't already, subscribe so you don't miss what's next, which is my conversation with Jason Dove, Mark, author of the Earth Said Remember Me how to Revive Our Memories and Restore the Planet.

Thank you, dear listener.

We'll see you back here soon.

And in the meantime, stay safe.

Sa.