interrupcion* Fair Trade

The Rio Negro River flows from the Andes to the Argentine coast giving life to all in its path, including a major Apple and Pear production zone in the Upper Rio Negro Valley. Cooperativa Frutícola Neuquén, one of the oldest cooperatives in the Valley, is an important organization that pools farmer resources to access needed capital and negotiates better terms with industry traders for its members. Their work is helping preserve small and medium farms, which are disappearing due to consolidation by foreign-owned companies that move benefits from trade out of the local area. Even before beginning the path toward Fair Trade Certification, Cooperativa Frutícola Neuquén was actively demonstrating Fair Trade values and a commitment to sustainability. As policy, Cooperativa Frutícola de Neuquén pays workers 30% over Argentina’s national minimum wage and has the goal of converting 100% of their production to organic in the next 10 years. Access to the Fair Trade market will allow members of Cooperativa Frutícola Neuquén to better compete against corporate consolidation, continue improving working conditions on their farms and support progress toward the ambitious goal of 100% organic.

Driving along the main route in General Roca, rows upon rows of neatly planted apple and pear trees rush by for miles. Apple and Pear production is General Roca; there’s even an enormous metallic Apple statue in the middle of town to prove it. And, although the industry is well set in its ways, this newly formed cooperative is setting out to do things a little different. As young producers who’ve decided to carry on the family heritage rather than move to the big city, founding members of Los Pioneros have instilled their generation’s values of social and environmental responsibility into the cooperative’s recently formed constitution. Their challenge as a new cooperative is not an easy one: small and medium farms are disappearing each year in Rio Negro due to consolidation in the industry and foreign-owned traders that are transferring the benefits from trade out of the local area. As a step toward living out its values and creating economic foundations during year one, Cooperativa Los Pioneros has committed to building a long-term commercial relationship with interrupcion* and progressing together along the Fair Trade* Sustainable Development Path. Fair Trade will provide access to beneficial markets abroad and give a competitive advantage over corporate farms and traders. In time, members of Cooperativa Los Pioneros hope the benefits of Fair Trade will assist in achieving the cooperative’s goals of owning a packaging plant and improving working conditions on the farms. In fact, the cooperative’s founders have even written worker participation in Social Premium investment into their new constitution.

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Premium Investments: 2008-2009: * Cooperativa Pioneros is designing a programme that will help the sons of the workers to access elementary and high school education. * Cooperativa Pioneros invested 50% of the fair trade premiums in a programme that helps its members to obtain Global Gap certification, a protocol that ensure labor safety and positive environemental impact of the farms.