Background
The Body Shop sells LOTS of perfume, we're famous for it! Who doesn't remember White Musk®? Maybe you've seen our new fragrances, Love etc TM! and Dreams Unlimited TM. But do you know what fragrances are made of, where it comes from and how? Of course, at The Body Shop our answer lies in fair trade with farmers from high up in the Andes of Ecuador in Latin America. Interested? Read on and let me tell you about my most recent trip there...
Ecuador in South America is on the Equator - that's where it gets its name. It can get quite hot and sticky, which makes it perfect for growing sugarcane, the raw ingredient in the organic alcohol we now use in many of our fragrances. Using fairly traded, organic alcohol is a pretty new thing for The Body Shop, and I'm pretty sure, a first for our industry.
The farmers
It had been 18 months since I first visited the remote rural community of traditional organic sugarcane farmers in Moraspungo in Cotopaxi province, high in the foothills of the Andes. That visit marked the start of the relationship between The Body Shop and the farmers of Consorcio Agro-Artesanal Dulce Organico (CADO), a cooperative of over 150 farming families who produce organic alcohol or aguardiente as it's called there. Back then, they were sceptical of who this 'foreign woman' was, promising to buy their alcohol. I'm sure they were wondering if the proposed long-term partnership would happen at all, let alone last.
Since that first order, the relationship has gone from strength to strength, and many containers of CADO's alcohol have made their way into our fragrances. So here I was, returning to visit them, to discuss how the project was going, review the positive impact on their community and learn how they'd like to progress.
Getting there
Before that, I had to actually get there. Easier said than done. CADO is one of our most remote suppliers - six hours' ride in a 4x4 from the coastal town of Guayaquil to the CADO HQ in Moraspungo, then another three hours to the outlying communities. Judging by the local transport, it looks like we were lucky with our rental car upgrade.
Sharing the ride with the ever energetic and enthusiastic Cecilia Arcos, President of CADO, we passed over seemingly endless mountain ridges, hairpin after hairpin, like a slow-motion roller-coaster ride. At times, it was a real white-knuckle ride - one side of the road was a 1000m sheer drop to the bottom of the valley. Occasionally we exchanged honks on the horn with colourful local buses going the other way - now that's what I call a tough commute!
In places, landslips and floods had disrupted the road and makeshift repairs added further excitement to an already interesting journey. For the cane farmers, this was their usual road to the market to sell their produce. Naturally, buyers didn't often come to them.
The welcome rest was brief. Before I could say, 'Wow, many shades of green in Nature's palette?', or indeed catch my breath in the rare 2,200m air, Cecilia had me donning boots and we set off at a lung-busting pace down a dirt path. It was only the end of the road, not the end of our journey - we were heading for the community of farmers in Facundo Vela.
We passed cane plantations quite different to the ones we had seen on the plains below. Down there, the plantations were dense and stunted, blackened where they had been burnt to clear the dead outer cane leaves. The workers harvesting the cane had old t-shirts wrapped around their heads and faces for protection, and were covered in soot. It was sugarcane farming on an industrial scale - very different to the CADO members' farms that I was walking through..
How alcohol is made
In the mountains, the farmers we work with farm organically - using no pesticides or chemicals, and weeding by hand. The cane plants are never burnt but left to grow. They are larger, more spread out and the farmers walk between the plants selecting the ripe stalks and leaving the parent plant alive - there is no scorched earth or burnt leaves in sight. In fact, the cane leaves are harvested and used as organic mulch on the fields or as fuel for the small distilleries, so nothing goes to waste. Some farmers grow beans or corn between the sugarcane and even the chickens roam about merrily - altogether better practice and a more sustainable form of agriculture.
Meeting the cooperative farming families again was uplifting - generations of artisan cane farmers, warm and friendly. On my last trip, they had been rather wary about the new relationship between CADO and The Body Shop and had plenty to quiz me about, which was great - passionate communities make passionate partners. This time, though, they were unreserved in their welcome. I felt I had won their trust.
Last year they showed me their farming techniques, how to select the ripe cane stalks (and which ones to leave - some canes are over 40 years old), how they crush the cane and extract the juice using mule power, how they ferment the cane juice and, of course, the distilleries that produce the alcohol. It's not as easy as it looks.
What trade with The Body Shop brings
One of the conditions of trade with The Body Shop is an improvement in work safety. The farmers were very proud that in the past 18 months, potentially dangerous machinery had being fitted with safety guards. This is a direct example of how a fair price can help reduce work accidents. The farmers were also keen to tell me of other improvements. For most of them, there had been investment in new stainless steel stills and older stills had been repaired. For one farmer, a home refrigerator had been repaired; for another community, the purchase of snake-bite kits (snakes are a serious problem in the rural location) and the chance of a university education for some of their children. Others have reinvested in a new stainless steel still, like Berta and her daughter Doris. These were just some of the ways in which The Body Shop's Community Fair Trade fund and income generated from the trade had been put to good use.
The Body Shop relationship with CADO is in its infancy and, as with our other producers, we are looking to create a long-term partnership offering a fair price for the co-operative's alcohol. This recognises the co-operative's quality of produce and its skill in production, and helps the farming families plan for their future. The fair price The Body Shop pays to CADO includes a fund to assist with social and environmental projects, and as our trade with them grows, we will carry on listening to the Moraspungo farming families and work together to identify ways that our trade can continue benefiting their community.
For me it was a sad farewell to the cane farmers of Moraspungo, but as I said, this is just the start of the project. I'll be back again soon so we can continue building our relationship. You might say that's the (organic) spirit...