U.S. company interrupcion* Fair Trade has expanded its scope of Latin American suppliers and products, while at the same time its consumer base is changing.  Founder and CEO Rafael Goldberg tells www.freshfruitportal.com how demand for fair trade has moved inland from its key driver markets on the East and West Coasts, appealing to members of faith-based groups concerned for the welfare of farmers in foreign countries.

Click here for a photo gallery of interrupcion* fair trade suppliers.

Goldberg says the fair trade industry cannot limit itself to specific target markets as the movement has spread in unexpected ways and places.

"You’ve got a key driving force in this movement in markets like the Northeast and California where people are looking at the next big thing and in those areas they seem to have been ready to embrace fair trade," he says.

"But at the same time we’ve seen a lot of people that have come to an appreciation of fair trade from areas you might not expect such as Ohio and even North Dakota - you’ve got very active demand and communities around the Midwest of the country.

"A lot of that has been sparked by faith-based movements, church groups and other sorts of religious groups that recognize where we buy our food and how it gets made has real impacts on people in developing countries, and they've arrived at fair trade through those kinds of communities."

He says the market isn't limited to higher income brackets either, as fair trade produce can still be sold at affordable prices despite the existence of social premiums.

"In terms of our design as an organization and a vision, we aim to be very efficient and we aim to be in any case possible creating value for our customers by cutting costs where we can and organizing our work in efficient ways.

"What we find in many supply chains, not just in fruits and vegetables, there is latitude and there are ways to promote items effectively and pay a social premium, while giving consumers very good value.

"It's been our focus to provide great products with positive values associated with them that make the world a better place, but to do so in a way that is the most efficient that it can be, doing retail promotions that can satisfy everybody from growers to consumers."

He says the company has grown significantly from its initial products of apples, pears and blueberries.

"Building on the success of those items we have found a warmer reception to expanding the offerings of fair trade and organic produce to existing partners, and seeking out new ones."

Chilean projects and earthquake emergency support

Interrupcion* has taken on a range of new fair trade and/or organic products from Latin America, including avocados from Peru, Ecuadorian bananas and mangoes, Argentine and Chilean blueberries, and cherries from Chile.

"We have a dedicated team that works throughout Latin America who work with producers to identify opportunities with various producer groups, and to work with them hand-in-hand on everything from agricultural engineering issues, pre-harvest and technical issues to capacity building, as well as on the fair trade certification standards being met for the appropriate certifiers to come and do inspections," says Goldberg.

"For the last 10 years we have been expanding on existing items and developing new items with growers so the example of our Chilean cherry deal is a producer group in Curicó and we’re going to be starting a more regularized deal with them this coming season.

"We did some testing with their products in the last season last year, and we had great results in terms of quality and there’s a very high commitment to bringing the principles we value into their organization."

He adds the new office in Chile is delivering great results and is also working aggressively on fair trade and fair trade organic blueberries to complement its existing supply.

Goldberg highlights the systems in place and developing in Linares, Talca and Villarica and Chile are good examples of the benefits fair trade and social premiums can bring to growers.

"The agricultural sector there is very well developed in many ways, however as in most well developed supplier countries, one of the key things that’s important for growers is to have scale.

"Our work in Chile has centered around the larger growing operations that have the capacity to offer services to smaller growers in the area, and those smaller growers can get the benefits and efficiencies of a larger operation without actually being large themselves.

"We’ve found that expanding this cooperative structure has spread the positive impact to many growers who otherwise would not be able to participate."

But it is in times of disaster when the benefits of social premium funds are perhaps most visible.

"We had the devastating earthquake in Chile in 2010 which was a terrible occurrence, right in the middle of blueberry season, and one of the things that crisis showed is that in terms of being resilient as a community, it’s about having certain minimum resources you can draw upon in the event that the unexpected happens.

"When this disaster struck they had through the social premium funds that had been accumulating throughout the season; a resource where hundreds of people were able to receive medical and food supplies, they could help people rebuild their homes, participate in clean-up operations and even buy the basic necessities."

The company also sources fair trade grapes from Los Andes in Chile, while a fair trade certification process is taking place for fair trade avocados in Quillota.

Other new projects

Goldberg says the company's upcoming organic avocado deal from Ica, Peru is exciting, with the first arrivals expected at the end of this month. Elsewhere in Peru, interrupcion* is also working with Trujillo growers to certify fair trade asparagus.

Recently interrupcion* has been involved with organic fair trade banana imports from El Oro in Ecuador.

"We've been working on it for the last eight months. They're basically a co-operative of small-to-medium size growers that have been exporting most of their production as either organic or conventional.

"We've stepped in to be the first doing volumes on the fair trade organic production for them, so essentially we've been been able to do is sell more of their product as fair trade organic than they had been able to do in the past.

"From a volume perspective we’ve been able to see a really good movement in the market up here. We have introduced the fair trade organic banana to multiple retail chains and many distributors here in the Northeast and Canada."

He says the Ecuadorian banana deal has been smooth for his business despite some of the weather issues the country has had, while the country's regulations around fixed prices have not posed any issues.

"What we see is that any regulation that is going to have a dominant effect on the pricing out of a certain region, like the government of Ecuador sets a fixed price that is negotiated, what we would see is the fair trade premium would go on top of that regulation."

"Also, in the absence of an organic standard set by a government, we would always be working for a premium for their organic production."

The business has a well-established supply base in Argentina with blueberries, apples, pears, peaches, cherries and plums, from the provinces of Tucumán, Buenos Aires, Río Negro and Neuquén. It also purchases organic pineapples from Costa Rica and bananas from the Dominican Republic.

Related stories: Opinion: fair trade produce goes from strength to strength

Fair trade audits aren't costly and save lives, says Nature's Pride CEO

www.freshfruitportal.com