Archive for the ‘Wine’ Category

Fair Tracing at the Royal Geographical Society Conference 2009

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

University of Manchester

At this year’s Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Conference in Manchester (26-28 Aug 2009), Fair Tracing’s Dr Dorothea Kleine teamed up with Dr Ian Cook (Exeter University) and Dr Mark Graham (Oxford Internet Institute) to host three sessions on “Follow the thing: New Cultural and Economic Geographies“. The idea of the session was to bring together value chain research conducted from cultural geography and economic geography perspectives (see also the full programme).

Our sessions had 13 papers (one of which was on the Fair Tracing project) running from 09:00 to 16:50. Thanks to the great interest in the topic, sponsorship from two research groups, the quality of the papers (and the lucky coincidence that our session info was printed in the front section of the programme at a busy, multi-strand conference with several sessions in parallel) we had audiences of over 30 people throughout the day, consisting of mainly cultural, but also some economic geographers. 

The quality of questions were outstanding. One question on the Fair Tracing project was whether we had spoken to workers directly, or whether we had, just like much of the Fair Trade research, merged the categories or producers and workers. I was glad to be able to explain that our focus groups in Chile had been conducted with vineyard owners, bodega employees and workers separately. I also remarked how at the time one of us (ie Dr Ann Light) succeeded in involving the foreman in conversation and distracting him sufficiently while Macarena Vivent and I had unsupervised focus group time with workers… 

Ah, we were a great team!      

Posted in Chile, conferences, Events, Fair Tracing presentations, General, Supply Chains, Wine | Comments Off

Fair Tracing in the New Scientist

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
New ScientistJournalist Mason Inman from the New Scientist magazine interviewed Fair Tracing Project Manager Dr Dorothea Kleine for his article “Barcode’s could reveal your food’s credentials” which has just appeared in this week’s issue.  In it, Inman cites the Fair Tracing project:
“Meanwhile, an online initiative called the Fair Tracing Project aims to publicise how farmers in poor countries are treated by the multinational companies that sell their produce in the west. Farmers use mobiles to upload photos and videos “so they can tell a story about the labour conditions they’re working under”, says Fair Tracing team member Dorothea Kleine of Royal Holloway, University of London. Kleine and her colleagues add this to data on how the goods travel from farm to store, including the amount that packagers, shippers, and retailers get paid along the way.
So far they have completed case studies on Chilean wine (see diagram) and Indian coffee. Customers in stores should eventually be able to photograph a product’s bar code with their phone, and be directed to the relevant charts and videos.”
 
See the diagram: http://tinyurl.com/lxup24 
This is the second time Fair Tracing appeared in the New Scientist, and this time we were also able to point to the other projects we collaborate with in the newly formed Ethical Consumer Information System (ECIS) network. Of these, the GoodGuide Project (www.goodguide.com) was also mentioned in the article.  

Posted in Chile, Coffee, Coffee Traceability, Fair Tracing publications, General, India, Tracing & Tracking, Wine | 2 Comments »

Fair Tracing team in Chile again

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

Dorothea and Macarena at Valparaiso Harbour

Anyone recognise the place? As avid users of our Fair Tracing Demo will have spotted, this is Valparaiso Harbour in Chile, where the Los Robles Wine gets shipped off around the globe to Sainbury’s harbour warehouses in the UK. Dorothea Kleine and Macarena Vivent from the Fair Tracing team went there to see how the container shipments worked.  

meeting vintners and employees This August, about one year on from our original visit, Dorothea and Macarena from the Fair Tracing Team returned to Curico, Chile, to meet with the Fairtrade vintners again. For a variety of reasons, including the fall of the US dollar, the Los Robles co-operative was in financial difficulties (see here). The producers who had the Fairtrade certification, however, had managed to line up an alternative buyer for their Fairtrade grapes next year.

The vintners and employees of the co-operative were the first group to co-design our interfaces for Fair Tracing in 2007, so now we came back and presented the three versions of interfaces we have now begun to develop. The producers remain interested in continuing to work with us while the supply chains through which they are trading are changing. We wish our partners all the very best as they have to manoeuvre through these difficult economic times!  

  

Posted in Chile, Fair Tracing project activities, Supply Chains, UI, Wine | Comments Off

Project member publication: “Negotiating partnerships, understanding power: doing action research on Chilean Fairtrade wine value chains”

Monday, June 16th, 2008

Dr Dorothea Kleine, the Fair Tracing project manager, has just published ”Negotiating partnerships, understanding power: doing action research on Chilean Fairtrade wine value chains” in The Geographical Journal, 174:2, pp 109-123.

Posted in Chile, Fair Tracing publications, Fairtrade, Wine | Comments Off

WhyBuy.It?

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

Wibi - Los Robles wine

Just what can you achieve with a weekend of Social Innovation? After 24 hours of simultaneous hacking, designing and user requirement gathering, our Barcode Wikipedia team came up with a basic prototype system: WIBI.it. This is a simple user interface to a wiki-like system that lets anyone look up a product by its barcode and add information. The system also grabs related tagged photos from Flickr and automatically links to Amazon, price comparison sites, and related blog and review articles.

Wibi.It - Search

Tom and Fred managed to integrate some open source code to recognise photos of barcodes taken using Nokia phone cameras, allowing users to look up information directly using their mobile. One of the killer apps we envisioned for this type of system would be in-store price comparisons. If you are looking around shops for say DVDs or a flat-screen TV, wouldn’t it be useful to see what online prices were available at the same time — and click to order? This has the potential to turn most of the world’s shops into exhibition spaces, with the real commerce happening on the Internet.

Thanks to David Wilcox you can watch our team’s presentation at the conclusion of the weekend:

Posted in Coding, Design, Events, General, Media, Mobile Devices, OII, Open Source Software, Technology, UI, Wine | Comments Off

Tracing Chianti

Tuesday, February 19th, 2008

Want to obtain more information about the bottle of Chianti you just purchased? You can trace it here (in Italian). Each bottle has a code than can be entered via the web form or by sending a text message.

Posted in General, Technology, Tracing & Tracking, Wine | Comments Off

Fair Tracing visits Los Robles in Chile

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007

The hard work….

Ann Light (human-computer interaction specialist), Dorothea Kleine (economic geographer, project manager) and Macarena Vivent (ICT4D specialist, project director Chile) from the Fair Tracing Team have just completed an intensive round of fieldwork with our producer partners, the co-operative Los Robles in Chile. We visited the vineyards and the winery production facilities, interviewed workers, vintners, employees and management and conducted focus groups and participatory design workshops. Here are some photos: 

Tractor in the vineyards

Observing the work in the vineyards…

two workers are interviewed by Dorothea

Interviewing vintners and workers…

Workshop with workers 

Holding focus groups with workers (finding out about their perspective on the wine value chain, on consumers, on Fairtrade, and on technology) ….

Design Workshop with Los Robles Employees 

Conducting a participatory design workshop with the co-operative’s employees (conceptualising the value chain, mapping information flows and processes, identifying current data formats and technology in use etc.)…

meeting with volunteers 

Meeting volunteers, technophiles and creative students to discuss local content creation..

Fair Tracing Team with the director 

…and agreeing on next steps with the Directores (representatives of the members of the co-operative) and the General Manager of Los Robles, Francisco Della Maggiora Silva (in the picture with Macarena, Ann and Dorothea).   

three flags (UK, Chile, Germany) with team members

Los Robles were very friendly hosts – they even raised a flag for each of us on our multinational research team! (But despite Ann’s extensive efforts of persuasion the Union Jack refused to unfurl properly for our photo…)

Macarena and Ann drinking peach syrup

Yes, there was lots of very good wine. But we also raised a glass of typical Chilean “Mote con huesillos” (yummy peach syrup with dried peach and boiled wheat) in Curicó’s famous Café Montero in honour of Maria Montero, our valiant Research Assistant who stayed in London to hold the fort while we were away on our fieldwork visit to Chile. Cheers, Cote!

Posted in Chile, Fair Tracing project activities, Fairtrade, General, ICTs and Agriculture, Supply Chains, Tracing & Tracking, Wine | Comments Off

Fairtrade wine tasting at Vinopolis

Wednesday, November 7th, 2007

The UK Fairtrade Wine Committee set its second annual wine tasting event at Vinopolis on November 1st.  The tasting display wines from 18 producer groups from Argentina, Chile and South Africa, and nine importers were represented.

As fairtracing project, we were also there. We had the agreement from the Fairtrade Wine Comittee to hand out questionnaires and thanks to the help of Joy from Ehrmanns we finally reached very enthusiastic visitors that filled out the questionnaire and agreed to be interviewed in the near future. A good start for our work with consumers!.

2007-10-londres-mjm-vinopolis.jpg

Currently, there is an increasing demand for Fairtrade certified wine in the UK. According to the FLO, total UK Fairtrade sales exceeded £290m in 2006, running at annual growth rates of 40% for the past five years. Wine is one of the fastest growing categories of Fairtrade goods in the UK and general wine volumes increased by 116.7% in 2006 compared to 2005. The UK is by far the biggest market for Fairtrade wine, and looks due to continue increasing.

In order to highlight the quality of wines in this sector, the Fairtrade Wine Committee, also organised an Award during the tasting including 48 wines from the three countries where Fairtrade-accredited wines are produced. Chile was the big winner with wines picking up the two top prizes. Equality Fairtrade Sauvignon Blanc, from Chile’s Maule Valley, scooped the honor of Best White, and the Co-op’s Fairtrade Chilean Carmenère from Los Robles cooperative in Curicó was voted Best Red of the competition. Congratulations to our partner Los Robles!

Posted in Events, Fair Tracing project activities, Fairtrade, Wine | Comments Off

A different kind of sampling in Curico…

Monday, October 29th, 2007

Dorothea, Maca and I have had a most exciting week in Curico with our excellent partners at Los Robles. Marta has shown us how chemical analysis ensures quality control; Paula has shared her expertise in mixing grapes to produce the best from the harvest; Diana has described the social programme of the collective; Felipe, Fidel and Pablo have introduced the documentation processes that see conversion from kilos of grapes to litres of wine; Francisco and Sergio have explained the value of FairTrade – and we happened to meet Leo of FLO conducting one of his regular assessment visits, so we had an interesting chat with him too. We ran a workshop on how all the different information that contributes to wine production might be made available and intelligible to ethical consumers, held a drinks event for anyone interested in contributing their stories and images from daily life, sampled collective life with an evening of ‘asado’ and vino Los Robles (see picture below), and made two visits to meet producers in their vineyards. (And that was all before breakfast!)

Asado, first night of our visit to Curico

Our hosts are really friendly and my Spanish skills are increasing exponentially (from a very small base). I can’t believe that it’s all over for this visit in just three days…

Dorothea and Maca say hi!

Posted in Chile, Fair Tracing project activities, General, Wine | Comments Off

Los Robles at the Wines of Chile Annual Trade Tasting

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007

copy-of-2007-10-wines-of-chile-tasting-2.jpg

 

On October 16th we met Los Robles at the Wines of Chile Annual Trade Tasting in London. Dorothea and I tasted the excellent new harvest 2007 and enjoyed the company of Export manager Sergio and Chief Oenologist Paula from Los Robles. We also met Joy Edmondson from Ehrmanns, Los Robles’ wine importer in the UK.  

 From the more than 90 Chilean wine producers participating in the exhibition, Los Robles was the only one with fairtrade wine.

  

  

Posted in Events, Fair Tracing project activities, Fairtrade, General, Wine | 1 Comment »