Fair Trade and Alter-Eco

One of the great things about interning with CAEF for the summer is getting to see how a Fair Trade business model works from the ground-up. Alter Eco, a France-baded Fair Trade company, made it's annual visit to the Surin Cooperative recently. Being a native French speaker, Liliane must have been a big help with communication during the recent visit from Alter Eco!

I have spent one day with Cécile and Carmen who came from France to audit Rice Fund Cooperative. They are both working for Alter-Eco, Cecile is the sales Manager of North France and Carmen is one of her staff.

The Organic Rice Fund Surin Agriculture : ORFSC was founded in 1992 and became FLO-Certified in 2003. In 2000, Rice Fund and Alter-Eco have begun to work together and over the past few years, Cécile told me that it is one of the best fair trade cooperative project.

Surin province is situated in the North-east of Thaïland, a region caled Issan. The saline soil of this area provides the best condition for growing aromatic Jasmin rice : Hom mali rice. That is why, Surin province was assigned to conduct the pilot projet in 1999 of producing organic Hom mali rice known domestically and also worldwilde. Rice Fund has been working for many years with small-scale farmers to create a sustainable, fair and local food system. Together, they promote sustainable livelihoods and green community (food security and environmental conservation). For 13 years it has been certified organic by ACT (a thaï Label). CAEF provides training modules for organic farming to help farmers growing their rice organicly and the Rice Fund Coop. provides a structure for joining forces and exporting rice to Europe and the United States.

Rice Fund carries out its own packaging. Rice goes to a quality control system before being packed by labors.

After examined one by one the whole packaging process, we went to Donlengthai village where we interviewed P’ Pakpum. Then, we went to an other village : Tabthai and learnt how to grow rice. We all enjoyed planting rice with the local farmers.



The activity of Alter Eco has always rested on two foundations :

· knowledge and control channels on one hand

· distribution, and the attractiveness of the offer in the other.

Since 1998, we use and enrich our own audit methodologies and control pathways that allow us to complement the Max Havelaar label, to have a perfect knowledge of channels and local issues. Within our team, Audit & Sourcing plays a key role alongside the Sales Department amd the Financial Department. We continuously measure the positive impact of our work on the producers in the South, and also to continuously improve our effectiveness in this respect.

By being continuously directly involved in auditing our producer, we can directly see any irregularities or issues and raise them directly with the producers as well as bring such issues to the attention of WFTO.

These unique methodologies are specific to Alter-Eco. We’re recognized for our commitment from upstream to downstream sectors. This is possible due to the unique knowledge of local issues and sectors that Alter Eco has. Consequently, Alter-Eco has been chosen by FLO-Cert to sit on its Certification Committee that meets to decide on labeling and non-labeling of producer organizations. » (source : www.altereco.com)