Fairer than fair trade – The Guardian, 24/6/08
In Buginyana, a village high on Mount Elgon, I was taken to see a brand new coffee store. Sure, it was built with the social premium – but far more impressive was the room next door, where flip charts explained not just prices but the role of the co-op, the importer, the brand, the retailer, the consumer and even the media in the supply chain. According to Nimrod Wambette, chairman of the Gumutindo Coffee Co-operative, six out of 10 farmers on the mountain now understand these matters – an empowerment that goes way beyond money. This is the empowerment of ideas, albeit enshrined in brick.
“Every shipping vessel that enters and leaves the United States is required to submit shipping records that document its cargo. Most of these documents are a matter of public record – you could look up the information yourself if you wanted to. But there are millions of such documents submitted each year, with no searchable index, making the data practically useless. Until now. ImportGenius has licensed import/export data form a number of sources (along with free sources like US Customs), which is added to a database that is updated daily. For a monthly fee ($99 for standard access, $250 for premium) users can search through the data, allowing them to identify criteria including the class of cargo, the company involved, and the point of origin.”
