Equifruit, a women-owned Montreal-based company, was founded by Jennie Coleman in 2006. The company sources organic and Fairtrade-certified bananas from Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Mexico and Nicaragua. In Ecuador, Equifruit works with ASOGUABO, a cooperative originally founded by 14 small-scale farmers who wanted to sell their bananas to supermarkets directly. Now, ASOGUABO has grown to become one of the largest Fairtrade organic banana exporters in Ecuador.
While in Peru, Equifruit partnered with APPBOSA co-op farmers who were cotton farming for a monopoly. By shifting to Fairtrade-certified banana farming, they’ve improved their communities with investments in schools, healthcare centers, clean water, and better infrastructure for efficient banana transportation and storage.
Equifruit’s organic and Fairtrade bananas are available in Canada at Farm Boy, Longos, Goodness me!, Nature’s Emporium, and more. For those in the US, Equifruit is currently only available at select Cosco in the Greater NY area. That being said, they are said to begin ramping up sales in the US soon.
Source: settingmind.com