"fairtrade" news and stories

Here in the UK we are coming to the end of Fairtrade Fortnight. This is all part of the the Fairtrade Foundations promotion to raise awareness of its goals and products - basically this revolves around giving a fair price for a crop in an attempt to eleviate world poverty.

On-line there are plenty of stores where you can buy fairtraded products -

• Traidcraft - a founding member of the Fairtrade Foundation
• Simply Fair - claims he largest range of Fairtrade certified food products online in the UK
• Goodness Direct - good for special dietary needs (gluten-free, diary free, Kosher etc
• OneFood - fresh produce from British producers - not all Fairtrade is Third World
• New Consumer Shop - wide range of products from fashion, books and toiletries in addition to food items
• Greenol - generally organic products but also ethically aware, Fairtrade and environmentally friendly.

Source

This afternoon, while running a few errands, I stopped into a relatively new gourmet market nestled away in a strip mall. I browsed around for a while, checking out their prepared foods (which included sous vide packages) and trying to hide my sticker-shock expression over the price of some of their artisan American cheeses.
 
Not looking to spend a whole lot, I settled on a bar of Dagoba Organic Chocolate. I had originally tried one of their bars several months ago, an organic dark chocolate with lavender and blueberries. I usually shy away from chocolate with other flavoring, but this looked worth the risk. The lavender was not overpowering, as I'd feared, and the blueberries added a good textural contrast to the chocolate.

Having tried one bar with added flavorings already, this time I tried their Conacado Bar, named for the farmer-owned cooperative in the Dominican Republic that produces the cacao. For a 73% bar, it was surprisingly creamy, with some slightly woody notes and hints of toasted nuts.

I'm told that Dagoba also produces a bar with rosemary, although I've yet to find a store near me that carries it.