Book focuses on the faces behind the food
WINNIIPEG, MB�"Until recently, there were just a few businesses offering Fair Trade products. Now Canada has the fastest growing Fair Trade market in the world.
This is due, in part, to people like �ric St. Pierre, a photojournalist from Quebec and a trailblazer in the area of Fair Trade education.
Aside from hosting and speaking at conferences, hosting photo exhibits and developing campaigns, he is the author of two books, including his most recent, Fair Trade: A Human Journey.
The book aims to re-attach consumers to the things they consume and to the people who produce them, he says. Although Fair Trade alternatives are readily available, many people still do not buy them.
With commentary by Emerson da Silva and Mathieu Lamarre, Fair Trade: A Human Journey is a beautiful book of photography documenting St. Pierre's travels through 15 countries. He lived and worked among the producers of coffee, rice, cotton, bananas, cocoa, tea, flowers, sugar, guarana, wine, handicrafts, quinoa and shea.
St. Pierre travelled throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America, visiting the countries that export the highest amounts of these products. He visited Ecuador to document the production of bananas and Thailand to document rice farming.
Stories include that of Beyene Udesa, a coffee producer who lives in Yirgacheffe, Ethiopia and farms a tiny sliver of the 400,000 hectares of the country dedicated to coffee production.
He picks coffee fruit all morning, brings a basket into his home at 11 a.m. so his wife can roast the beans to make coffee at lunchtime for all of the friends who work on the plantation, an elaborate ceremony lasting over an hour in Ethiopia.
"Coffee, tea and other products are the life and work of millions of people," says St. Pierre. "If that's the only thing that [readers] get out of this book, then I will have achieved something."
Each chapter on a certain Fair Trade product includes an issue that these producers face. For producers of shea, the issue is female solidarity; for producers of rice, the issue is organic farming.
Though the book took eight years for St. Pierre to produce including doing research, fundraising, travelling, writing, editing, layout and translation from French to English, St. Pierre says it was worth it.
"First and foremost it is a tool of education," he says. "I have had the opportunity to spend time with peasants, artisans and producers from 15 different countries. I want to bring back those experiences through my images and through the text so that people can share in those experiences with the producers.
"We need to make sure that people get a good price for their work. This won't solve [every problem that the producers face] but it's a great step in the right direction."
Outside of Quebec, Fair Trade: A Human Journey is sold at Ten Thousand Villages, a chain of stores that sells 100 per cent Fair Trade handicrafts, coffee, tea, chocolate and a host of other products. St. Pierre hopes to have the book available at major bookstores across Canada as well.
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