A Guide To Fair Trade Nuts

Fair Trade nuts are harvested and gathered by small scale producers in Africa, India and Latin America and typically, these producers have a small plot of land in their village or close to their village where they will grow nuts and also grow food that they feed their families with. What all these different small scale producers have in common is that they'd all like to make a living from the nuts that they grow. So in order to be able to do that, they joined forces and form or join a cooperative or a similar organization and that enables them to pool their individual small volumes of nuts together so they've got enough to export to companies like Liberation Foods.

It also means that they can work together to make sure their quality is the absolute best. Liberation Foods is a Fair Trade nut company. In fact, it's the only Fair Trade nut company in the world, as far as we know and it's a very special company because it's 42% owned by the farmers that we by from.

So not only of the Fair Trade farmers joined forces in their own villages and communities to work together, they joined forces across the world to create their own company, Liberation Foods. Fair Trade nuts means that the producers, the farmers, the gatherers, get paid a decent price for the nuts that they sell and that means that they cover the costs, their own costs, and that they can make a decent and modest living from selling their nuts. And that means that they can do things like send their kids to school or to make sure that they feed their families all year round.

Selling their nuts as Fair Trade means that the farmers, like Judith who's a peanut farmer from Malawi or Casildo who's a Brazil nut gatherer from Bolivia, selling their nuts as Fair Trade means that they get the Fair Trade premium that they can spend and decide with the rest of their community how they spend it and they spend it to the benefit of the whole community. So, Judith's community in Malawi decided to build what they call the Guardian Shelter and that's because their nearest hospital can often be a long walk from where they live and so when they go to visit their relatives in hospitals, previously, there was nowhere for them to stay or rest or even eat while visiting their relatives and so with their Fair Trade premium, the community in Malawi have built a Guardian Shelter. So, there's somewhere now for their families to stay when they're visiting people in hospital.

Casildo's community in Bolivia decided to spend their Fair Trade premium in buying new tools so that each time they went into the rainforest to gather Brazil nuts, they'd be able to gather more Brazil nuts, making each trip more worthwhile. Liberation is a very special company. It's the only Fair Trade nut company that is 42% owned by the nut producer that supply it and that means, in running the company, I work alongside Casildo from Bolivia, Tommy who's a cashew nut farmer from India, Judith, peanut farmer from Malawi.

We work together to decide how the company's run, which means that these small scale farmers from all over the world are much more involved in how their nuts are sold and they can, with me, make sure that we get a fair deal for them and a fair deal for consumers. So, we really hope that this series of videos about cooking with nuts will help you to get more enjoyment from cooking with eating nuts and I know that Casildo and Tommy and Judith and the other nut farmers will be delighted to see how their nuts are being used in kitchens all around the world. Thank you. .