On May 1st, 1986, Rink Dickinson, Michael Rozyne and Jonathan Rosenthal officially launched the worker-owned fair trade cooperative, Equal Exchange. The three founders had met while working at a New England food cooperative. Through their experiences, they had come to believe that U.S. shoppers were “dangerously disconnected from the source of their food.” People no longer seemed to know where their food was coming from; who produced it and under what conditions; and most importantly, who was profiting in each step of the supply chain.
This concern, and the desire to transform our food system, led them to create Equal Exchange. It was a radical idea in 1986: to create an Alternative Trade Organization that would help farmers and their families gain more control over their economic futures; educate consumers about trade issues affecting farmers; bring farmers and consumers closer together; and create a company that would be controlled by the people who did the actual work. All while providing high-quality foods that would nourish the body and soul and protect the planet’s natural resources.
It was an exciting time. Equal Exchange was in the vanguard of those attempting to bring the fair trade movement, begun in Latin America and Europe, into the U.S.: a system based on paying a fair price for farmers’ crops; supporting democratically-run small farmer cooperatives; and conducting international trade in an ethical manner, based on fairness rather than exploitation. The company also aligned itself with two important U.S.-based movements: food cooperatives, whose motto was Food for People, Not for Profit; and organics, which recognized the importance of food produced in a manner that protected producer, consumer, and planetary health.
