The search for a good/understandable FairTrade organization continues.

IFAT-LA (international fairtrade associatio-latin america) seems somewhat promising,
unfortunately i am not a spanish speaker/reader.

so perhaps spanish lessons are in the near future for us seedling-ers?

anyhow, the Latin American IFAT has a small handful of Peruvian producers that are currently registered with them.
Major stumbling block is both the language barrier as well as their parent company's policy of accepting applications for FairTrade Organizations that are already trading.

Finding myself on facebook, yet again, i looked up World Fair Trade...
i shall now spend the day immersed in links.
so so many...
surely one will be a good thread!

giving up on a driveway

Squealed to a stop to examine a driveway that has turned into a promise... Bulbs: tulips, daffodils. These will come every spring forever.

beer drinking in the afternoon

Pelayo and Dennis, our friends from Andamarca. We served them beer and then got Dennis to record a voiceover about the Cusichaca Trust. He has one daughter and his wife lives in the city. The voiceover said, Cusichaca rescues and restores terraces in the highlands and records and promotes use of indiginous agricultural knowledge in the terrace systems. They further encourage tourism as a sustainable alternative to development in the Andes.

Sendero

The New York Times has a huge story up about new Sendero Luminoso activity in Peru. The organization, whose last member supposedly turned themselves in in 2000, has simply gone underground for nearly ten years and become a drug cartel. Now people in Peru are faced with the same war on terrorism that killed tens of thousands of people in the mountains and scarred an entire generation. The war is hard to fight because of the jungle terrain, and the fact that senderistas look like anyone else in the mountains and are able to disappear into the undergrowth in a split second.

The coca leaf is an important cultural item. I chewed it ALL the time when I was in the mountains. It's great for altitude sickness and there's nothing more special than offering a little bit of it to the apu (mountain peak gods) before a planting, when you are fixing an anden wall, prior to harvest... So it's hard to control it because you shouldn't just ban the plant but about 90% of the stuff gets turned into cocaine rather than sold as a plain leaf, so...

I honestly don't know how I would fight this war if I were the Peruvian government, though I am pretty sure I wouldn't do it the same way they are doing it now; searching vehicles, declaring war, killing civilians. One official is basically quoted saying that a pregnant woman who was killed deserved what she got. There's a complete lack of sympathy for the mountain people, which in a racist country like Peru is what one might expect. Even in Sendero's previous era the war against terrorism (by both the government and The Shining Path) only became a serious issue once the terrorists bombed Lima.

I am going to look at which human rights organizations are working in Peru now, and try to keep up with the news, maybe donate some money so that at the very least we know what is happening. And in terms of the Seedling Project stuff, I am convinced that the best thing to do is provide alternate sources of income for remote rural mountain people so that there is an alternative to growing and selling cocaine. How do we get fair trade yarn, woven blankets, knitted caps out of Andamarca and into the US for some economic stimulus?

International Fund for Agricultural Development

A cache of documentaries produced by this unpretentious UN group is available here. This is an amazing resource... they also have a knowledge base which has an unbelievable amount of information for rural poor farmers and the organizations trying to help them. And! They just signed a loan agreement to provide support to farmers in the northern highlands of Peru. Right on. I think I will be reading this site for the next month. Here is a recent interview of the president of the organization in the Financial Times where they discuss how rich countries are realizing in order to guarantee food security they are going to have to support agriculture in other, poorer countries... we live in interesting times.

Have I mentioned?

...my new favorite social network. The San Francisco garden registry. It's a Futurefarmers project and I have just posted that I have an extra asparagus crown in case anyone nearby would like it. I really hope someone does want it because I hate adopting plants just to fail them right away.

Africa!

I have just read on US Food Policy the absolute most exciting news! The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development says that Africa is better off if they focus on organic agriculture. Many people have said it before (even within the UN), and many people will say it again, but each time we hear it I think it gets a little more real.

Organic agriculture is a "good option for food security in Africa", UNCTAD says, citing a 116% rise in productivity on 114 African farms that converted to organic or near-organic production.

Truly, truly thrilling, and I especially love this line in the recommendations for government section: Fund research on sustainable agriculture, building on indigenous knowledge in response and in partnership with farmers. EXACTLY what needs to happen in Peru as well (and what our friends at Cusichaca were doing last I heard).