How Pepperfire Brooks Foods Got Involved in the Fair Trade Movement

When we started importing goatpeppers from Haiti, our goal was to get fresh peppers from a country where any dollars we sent could do a world of good. We weren't thinking about organic food or local food security, we really just wanted goatpeppers. We had put an ad on our blog asking for goatpeppers and Roland Hyppolite responded. He lived in a small village of sugar cane farmers a wild ride east of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. A nation, Greg nor I have ever visited, but where local food security really becomes a blatantly important thing. We decided when we began working with Roland that we would pay him a fair landed price for the peppers he would send us, in exchange for ensuring the farmers he worked with could have the opportunity to advance their farms beyond the poor farmsteads that then existed when farmers had to work for others in order to feed their children.