A breathable cloud of Fairtrade fruit as part of your five-a-day
Can you get part of your five-a-day through inhaling a breathable cloud of Fairtrade fruit? The Fairtrade Foundation has teamed up with food architects Bompas and Parr 1 who are conducting a unique experiment by creating a Ziggurat of Flavour 2 which leads you to a Fairtrade fruit cloud that you can taste.
The Ziggurat will be a massive pyramidal installation, perched on top of a hill at the Big Chill Music Festival at Eastnor Castle Deer Park, Herefordshire and will be unveiled on Friday 6 August 3 . Once you've entered the bottom of the pyramid, you will go through a maze before emerging into a central chamber where you will enter a dense cloud of Fairtrade fruit.
The jury is out on whether you can contribute to your 5-a-day just by breathing but it's set to be unmissable event and a new way of thinking about how we consume food where it comes from. The Ziggurat launch will kick start a year-long Fairtrade fruit campaign by the Fairtrade Foundation5 called Power Up Your Fruit Bowl to promote awareness of the growing Fairtrade fruit range, which is bigger than just bananas.
Bompas and Parr are a twenty-something experiential duo who specialise in culinary events and have chosen to work with the Fairtrade Foundation on this project recognising that Fairtrade works closely with the farmers and workers who grow the fruit. Fresh Fairtrade oranges, lemons and pineapples are prepared onsite, liquefied by Big Chill visitors and clarified through reverse osmosis. The cloud itself is made using the same technology as Anthony Gormley’s Blind Light at the Hayward Gallery. To find out more go to www.fairtrade.org.uk/fruit
There are currently 19 types of Fairtrade fruit available. The theme of the Fairtrade Foundation’s fruit campaign reflects how we as consumers can help empower the Fairtrade farmers to make a positive difference to their lives. By simply buying Fairtrade bananas, grapes, oranges, lemons, pineapples, mangoes or melons, consumers are helping to ensure that Fairtrade fruit producers not only get paid a fair price for their produce but that they also receive an extra amount, the Fairtrade premium, which they can invest in their communities on things like crèches, water pumps and health clinics.
Bomarts is a small fruit farm in the Volta region of Ghana, West Africa and their pineapples and mangoes have been Fairtrade certified since 2002. The company employs between 500 and 600 workers, depending on season. The workers have chosen to invest the Fairtrade premium in social projects that benefit the workers and their communities. These include: a small loans scheme available to all workers; two kindergartens; three water boreholes to provide clean drinking water to the community; two village clinics; and tuition bursaries, school books and writing materials to workers’ children.
The premium fund is managed on behalf of the workers by a Joint Body of elected worker representatives. Diana Manasseh is the Fairtrade Officer at Bomarts Farm and sits on the Joint Body. Diana says: ’Fairtrade has helped Bomarts to invest in the community in many positive ways. We’ve seen children go onto higher education and been able to provide clean drinking water in three villages.’
The Fairtrade Foundation is launching this campaign to raise awareness of the need for fairer terms of trade for all farmers and workers producing the food we eat. The focus is on fruit because this is a staple shopping basket item. However, as a result of price promotions the price we pay does not always reflect the true cost of production. As a result of the recession many Fairtrade farmers are struggling to sell their produce to retailers on Fairtrade terms, and one of the aims of the campaign is to increase sales in the Fairtrade fruit category to open the door for new and existing producer co-operatives certified as Fairtrade.
Mark Varney, the Fairtrade Foundation’s Head of Business Development says: ‘This campaign is about helping people to understand the added value that Fairtrade fruit can bring. Not only does eating Fairtrade fresh fruit contribute to your own healthy lifestyle but you are also helping farmers, workers and their communities to make a sustainable living.’
For more information on the campaign, recipes ideas and what’s in season, please contact Faith Mall in the Press Office on 0207 440 8597/ 07766 504 947
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Notes to Editors
1. The FAIRTRADE Mark is a certification mark and a registered trademark of Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International (FLO) of which the Fairtrade Foundation is the UK member. The Fairtrade Foundation is an independent certification body which licenses the use of the FAIRTRADE Mark on products which meet international Fairtrade standards. This independent consumer label is now recognised by 72% of UK consumers and appears on products as a guarantee that disadvantaged producers are getting a better deal. Today, more than 7.5 million people – farmers, workers and their families – across 58 developing countries benefit from the international Fairtrade system.
2. Bompas & Parr designs spectacular food experiences often working on an architectural scale with cutting edge technology. Projects explore how the taste of food is altered through synaesthesia, performance and setting. http://www.jellymongers.co.uk/ABOUT
3. The Ziggurat is a three-story high pyramidal installation that draws inspiration from 18th Century Cuccagna monuments. These formed the centerpieces for the most spectacular public celebrations in history. They were vast architectural structures made of food based on the peasant tale of the Land of Cockaigne; a mythical place with mountains of cheese, rainstorms of cake and where all wildlife was pre-cooked and waiting to be eaten.
4. The Big Chill takes place at Eastnor Castle Deer Park, Herefordshire between Thursday 5 and Sunday 8 August 2010. Headline acts include Massive Attack, M.I.A., Lily Allen, Roots Manuva, Thom Yorke, Gregory Isaacs, Plan B, Tinie Tempah and Kruder & Dorfmeister. For further information visit: http://www.bigchill.net/festival
5. For more information on Power Up Your Fruit Bowl and Fairtrade fruit producers go to http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/fruit