Dennis Oppong
Today’s blog comes from Dennis Oppong, Assistant Project Leader of Agro Eco-Louis Bolk Institute, Rainforest Alliance’s implementing partner in Ghana. In his role, he is a technician, trainer and field coordinator of the iMPACT (Mars Partnership for African Cocoa Communities of Tomorrow) project. Here, Dennis gives us some real examples of the difference that training can make on everyday farming practices… Read the rest of this entry ?
A worker at Elite, a Rainforest Alliance Certified flower farm in Colombia.
Yesterday many of our readers would have either sent a beautiful bouquet of flowers to their loved one, or been the lucky recipient. But did you know that those flowers were probably grown in a rainforest country, and many of the ferns that envelop flower bouquets would have been grown in Costa Rica and Guatemala?
Kenya provides one-quarter of the European Union’s bouquets, while 90 percent of the cut flowers and ferns imported into the United States come from Colombia, Ecuador or other Latin American countries. Read the rest of this entry ?
To mark Valentine’s Day, we thought we’d quiz Marc Monsarrat, our East Africa and South Asia Manager, Sustainable Agriculture Division about romance and his ideal Valentine’s present… Read the rest of this entry ?
What better time to announce our work in spices than at the 11th World Spice Congress in Pune, India that took place over the weekend. We are teaming up with the Sustainable Spices Initiative (SSI) to adapt the existing Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN) standards to incorporate spice production. The SSI is the first major programme to build on the sustainable production of spices.
Founded by the Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) –and four leading players in the Dutch spice market, this major spice programme will aim to implement SAN standards to the production to 34 different types of culinary spices. Read the rest of this entry ?
With less than a week until Valentine’s Day, we thought we’d kick off our luuurve series with something for all you chocolate lovers out there…It’s amazing melted and mixed with milk. It’s the perfect addition to cake and cookie mix. It’s divine sweetened with a little sugar. We know it’s delicious (in all its forms), but there’s more to chocolate than great taste. A few fun facts to nourish your mind…
Throughout Central America, a puzzling new epidemic is threatening the lives and livelihoods of sugarcane workers. In Nicaragua, it causes more fatalities than HIV and diabetes combined, and in El Salvador, it is the second leading cause of death among males. Thousands of Central American men are afflicted with chronic kidney disease, and some epidemiologists and local doctors speculate that the disease is the result of overwork and exposure to dangerous agrochemicals. We recently spoke with Guillermo Belloso, a farm management specialist in El Salvador, about the epidemic and the Rainforest Alliance’s work with SalvaNATURA to improve conditions for sugarcane workers. [SalvaNATURA is an El Salvadorian conservation organisation and a founding member of the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN), which manages the standard to which all Rainforest Alliance Certified™ farms are audited.] Read the rest of this entry ?
Last week, Per Bogstad, our Manager of Sustainable Value Chains for UK and Ireland attended the 2 Degrees Summit, an event aimed at business people serious about sustainability. Here, Per gives us his thoughts on the day…
“Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?” Apple’s Steve Jobs once asked Pepsi-Co’s then CEO, John Sculley.
It was this quote that sprung to mind as Unilever’s Geoff McDonald spoke sincerely of Unilever having a ‘moral purpose’ (a purpose engendered into the makeup of a company founded by a man seeking to sell soap to the poor and diseased) and the reason he wanted to join the business. For, changing the world is exactly what Unilever seems intent on doing – with no small amount of help – it needs to be said (as Geoff did) – from Rainforest Alliance. Read the rest of this entry ?
This Valentine’s Day spoil your loved one without spoiling the planet with the Rainforest Alliance’s green guide to gifts and activities that help to protect the environment and the rights and well-being of workers around the globe.
Breakfast in bed:
Get off to a romantic start by bringing your loved one breakfast in bed. Make sure that the coffee, tea and juice has come from a Rainforest Alliance CertifiedTM farm. The little green frog on the packaging – such as on Kenco coffee, PG tips or an Innocent Smoothie – is your assurance that it was grown using methods that protect forests, soils and waterways on farms that provide decent wages, housing, education and health care to workers and their families. Read the rest of this entry ?
You are currently browsing the The Frog Blog UK: The blog of the Rainforest Alliance in the UK blog archives for February, 2012.
