Our floral departments are all dressed up for the holidays! Along with providing your traditional favorites in fresh, vibrant colors, we think this is the perfect time of year to reflect on how our Whole Trade® Guarantee provides beautiful blooms that can change someone’s world. From Costa Rican lilies to Ecuadorean roses, our Whole Trade flowers are grown to meet our commitment to ethical trade, the environment and the highest quality — all while bringing the warmth of the holidays to you and yours.

In Costa Rica, we buy our Whole Trade lilies from Plantas y Flores, and their deep red Asiatic Knockout lilies are perfect for the holidays. Plantas y Flores is located high in the mountains — about 6,600 feet above sea level — above San Jose near the Irazu volcano, which you can see on a clear day. They are keen on detail and, in addition to quality checks on foliage, they actually measure to ensure the head size of every lily hits our minimum specification. Once the lily stalk is cut for packing, the plant’s bulbs are taken out of the ground and used in the farm’s compost. It takes an average of 13-18 weeks to grow a lily plant from bulb to a stalk that is ready to be harvested for retail sale.

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Valentine’s Day and roses go hand in hand. And around here we’ve been thinking about not just how beautiful they are, but about what our Whole Trade Guarantee™ roses give back to the communities where they are grown.

Grown in the Ecuadorian Andes by a group of Fair Trade certified farms, these “blooms with benefits” help to cultivate better working conditions and equitable wages for the farms’ workers. For each case of Whole Trade roses purchased by Whole Foods Market, an additional percentage is paid directly to worker groups from each farm who collectively decide how to use the money. Some development projects have included education, training, scholarships, health care and housing.

Growing conditions for roses can be finicky at best, and Ecuador has come to be one of the more popular growing environments due to its 10,000 feet elevation, proximity to the sun and its cool nights. The flower industry started there around 20 years ago and currently gives direct employment to more than 70,000 people, with indirect employment going to another 210,000 people. While on average the entire country holds an unemployment rate of 8%, there is very little unemployment in the regions where the flowers business has developed.

Through our journey with Whole Trade roses, we are learning more every day about the farms, their workers and the flowers they produce. The opportunity to share the splendor and beauty that flowers convey while simultaneously helping others…I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Valentine’s Day!

When you visit our stores this holiday season, chances are you are going to notice some of the beautiful flowers available to dress up your home for the holidays. I’ve been partial to the Asiatic Knockout lilies, which are deep red in color with an open bloom — perfect for the holidays! These and other Whole Trade™ lilies are grown at Plantas y Flores, a floral farm in Costa Rica that I was honored to visit along with other Whole Foods Market team members in early December.

Plantas y Flores is located high in the mountains above San Jose near the Irazu volcano. The terrain is lush and steep, and the roads wind around the sides of the mountains. The elevation on the farm is around 2,100 meters, which is 6,600 feet above sea level, and on a clear day you can see the Irazu volcano. The weather was cold and rainy and we were all wearing jackets to keep warm in Costa Rica!

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We’re excited to announce the launch of NEW Whole Trade® Costa Rican Lilies! These absolutely gorgeous flowers are grown on a Rainforest Alliance certified farm in greenhouses perched high on the side of the Irazu Volcano in Costa Rica. They thrive in the rich volcanic soil, intense sunlight, consistent temperatures and high altitude.

Not only are these lilies stunning but they also support an awesome organization. For each box of Whole Trade lilies purchased, we make an additional contribution to our friends at EARTH University in Costa Rica to support their scholarship fund. EARTH (Escuela de Agricultura de la Región Tropical Húmeda) is a non-profit, international university dedicated to the sustainable development of the tropics through education, research and outreach. EARTH specifically recruits students from poor, rural communities around the tropics and provides many students with full scholarships so they can attend. Learn more about our partnership with EARTH. Read the rest of this entry »

When it comes to Valentine’s Day and roses, it’s hard to think of one without the other! We’ve been thinking about them a LOT around here…not just how beautiful they are, but more importantly what our Whole Trade Guarantee™ roses give back to the communities where they are grown.

Grown in the Ecuadorian Andes by a group of Fair Trade certified farms, these “blooms with benefits” help to cultivate better working conditions and equitable wages for the farms’ workers. For each case of Whole Trade roses purchased by Whole Foods Market, an additional percentage is paid directly to worker groups from each farm who collectively decide how to use the money. Some development projects have included education, training, scholarships, health care and housing.

Growing conditions for roses can be finicky at best, and Ecuador has come to be one of the more popular growing environments due to its 10,000 feet elevation, proximity to the sun and its cool nights. The flower industry started there around 20 years ago and currently gives direct employment to more than 70,000 people, with indirect employment going to another 210,000 people. While on average the entire country holds an unemployment rate of 8%, there is very little unemployment in the regions where the flowers business has developed. Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to our Whole Trade Guarantee program, I get to work with a ton of great vendors who are using their businesses in order to change people’s lives. Every day I hear stories that are truly inspiring, and this blog is a place where I get to share it all with you.

As you may remember, The Whole Trade Guarantee is a buying program that brings together a strict set of criteria for products from developing countries. This program guarantees exceptional product quality, more money for producers, better wages and working conditions for workers, sound environmental production practices and the support of poverty eradication through a donation of one percent of product sales to our Whole Planet Foundation.

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Dr. Bronner’s Magical Soap was one of the first Whole Body products offered at our original Whole Foods Market store in Austin, Texas in 1980. Over the years Dr. Bronner’s and Whole Foods Market have successfully grown their business in parallel, always committed to caring for the communities and environment around them. Today Dr. Bronner’s and Whole Foods Market have taken great strides towards improving the lives of producers in Third World countries with the fair trade certification of Dr. Bronner’s ingredients and the establishment of the Whole Trade Guarantee.

In shifting their supply chains to certified Fair Trade ingredients, Dr. Bronner’s makes a big difference in the lives of several thousand farmers and workers. Here are a few of their stories.

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As the first and only organic and Fair Trade chocolate factory in the U.S., bringing Theo Chocolate to our stores as part of our Whole Trade Guarantee makes perfect sense. They have a bar for everyone, but I’m partial to their Ivory Coast Dark Chocolate Bar with 75% Cacao and the Venezuelan 91% Chocolate Bar. And you have to check out their Jane Goodall “good for all” bars, which are now exclusively available at Whole Foods Market stores. Learn more about their high standards for social and environmental responsibility. Their excellent outreach work is exemplified by Juanita Vilchez’s story below.

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Imagine a world where honey bees are your family’s livelihood. The hives are tucked deep in the jungles of Chiapas and Quintana Roo, and have been tended by Mayan communities for generations. Although there is a centuries-old beekeeping tradition there, honey production has only recently been recognized as a viable and stable income opportunity in the global market.

In years past, middlemen, or “coyotes,” took a majority of the beekeepers’ income. With assistance from TransFair USA, Wholesome Sweeteners is able to pay a fair price directly to the beekeepers, who have formed vibrant worker-owned cooperatives that create meaningful employment, improve product quality, and send their children to school – until now, an unaffordable luxury in these economically-depressed regions. Additionally, by protecting the hives and native plant forage areas, Fair Trade encourages biodiversity and helps the forests thrive.

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If you aren’t on a vegan diet, chances are you didn’t know that all sugar isn’t considered vegan. It doesn’t come from an animal so what’s the issue? Bone char. Bet you didn’t know that many sugars are processed with bone char either. Bone char, usually made from the bones of cows, is used in the decolorization process for sugar – meaning it whitens the sugar through a filtration process. Standard sugar packages won’t explain all of this, but the process is unacceptable to many vegans and they avoid sugar as a result.

But that may be about to change when all the vegans out there find out about our 365 Everyday Value™ Vegan Cane Sugar (which retails for about $4 for a 4-pound bag). Our vegan sugar goes through a 100% animal-free carbon deactivation process to decolorize. This carbon is a mineral and therefore, a non-animal source. Great news, right?

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