Babies love bananas! But what on earth do you feed your little munchkins the rest of the time?

Tomorrow we’re getting together with our friends at Nature Baby to host a special in-store mash up with naturopath Natural Ange to offer parents a natural approach to food and feeding.

Parents can often be mystified by the dos and don’ts, ages and stages and debate of purees versus finger foods, associated with feeding babies and toddlers.

Ange is going to help us all demystify the experience, naturally. Head down to Nature Baby Grey Lynn, 433 Richmond Road, on Tuesday 8 May at 11am.

The first 30 bubs will get a free limited edition Nature Baby All Good bib and a pretty wicked goodie bag.

We’ll also have Kokako dishing up some of their yummy hot chocolate and fairtrade banana bread.

If you can’t head down to the store head over to the Nature Baby facebook page at 2pm tomorrow (Tues May 8). Ange will be doing a live facebook chat to answer all your questions.

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Choose Fair. The message is pretty simple this Fairtrade Fortnight kicking off this Friday (running till 20 May).

A simple choice here in little ol’ NZ makes a massive difference to the lives of farmers in developing countries.

We’ve listed just a few of the things we’ll be getting to. But this is just the tip of the iceburg. For other event listings in your town, check out fairtrade.org.nz

5-20 May Oxfam Biggest Coffee Breaks

Over 2000 people have signed up to host Oxfam Fairtrade Coffee Breaks around the country for Fairtrade Fortnight. That’s the biggest number ever! We’ll be having ours at All Good HQ on Tue May 15, 2.30pm. Come join-banana baking compulsory!

We’ll also be dropping in as special guests on a whole host of other coffee breaks.

4 May – Fairtrade Breakfast
Britomart Country Club, Auckland
7am

Get up bright and early and join ‘opinionist’ and comedian Te Radar for a special breakfast event heralding the launch of Fair Trade Fortnight. If Te Radar’s wit isn’t enough to lure you in, enjoy unlimited Fairtrade Certified coffee and hot choc from Caffe L’affare and Kokako, and a breakfast tray from Kokako and us! Buy tickets.

4 May – Fairtrade Cocktails with Mayor Celia Wade-Brown
82 Tory St, Hawthorn Lounge, Wellington
5.30-7.00pm

Fairtrade Fortnight kicks off in true Wellington fashion this week with a cocktail party with none other than big Fairtrade supporter & Mayor, Celia Wade Brown.

11 May – Fairtrade Breakfast
Technique on Harbour Terrace, Dunedin
7-8.30am

Dunedin’s first Fairtrade Breakie! Tuck into some french toast with Fairtrade bananas and listen to Papua New Guinea coffee grower Michael Toliman.

11 May –  The Great Fairtrade Trade Fair & Fashion Show
City Library, Dunedin
5.30pm

Stalls and displays from Dunedin’s fair trade suppliers; food, gifts, fashion and more! Delicious samples of fair trade goodies you can enjoy with a clear conscience, including coffee, chocolate and more!

13 May – Slow Food Waitakere Coffee Break
5a Gane Lane, Te Atatu Peninsula, Auckland
3pm

If you’re a westie, we suggest you get yourself along to the slow foodie break. Alessandra has already been baking up a storm in preparation for the event, check out her dairy free Fairtrade banana cake.

15 May, Pt Chev Primary Fairtrade Banana Cupcake Comp
Auckland

We’ll be judging the Fairtrade banana cupcakes made by the kids – best job in the world, we reckon!

18 May
Fairtrade Breakfast in the City, St James Wellington
7.30am-9am

Featuring the All Good mega smoothie stand – bananas, rolled oats, berries, and lots of gorilla.

We caught up this week with Dom & Courteney from Auckland’s food and entertainment blog www.gatherandhunt.co.nz. We’ve long been salivating over their restaurant reviews and we took the opp to meet them face-to-face to chew the fat on all sorts of stuff (many of which are now top secret plans to change the world -so watch this space).

It was a bit of a chance to do a dry run for Oxfam’s Biggest Coffee Break (we’re a proud sponsor) coming up next month for Fairtrade Fortnight (May 5-20, 2012). While we dished up some humble Fairtrade banana & choc muffins and Kokako Organic Fairtrade coffee. The G&H gals talked up their Fairtrade Fortnight feast-cupcakes, brownies, cakes and All Brown’s famous sugar pie (which is basically mainly sugar – may be full of Fairtrade goodness but sounds wickedly non-diabetic).

Life is a competition. So we clearly need to up our coffee break game before Tues 15th May, at 10:30am All Good HQ!

The lovely chaps at Oxfam have given you and extra week to sign up for your own break (entries close 29 April). It’s easy, just sign up here and Oxfam will send you a free pack with everything you’ll need including free Fairtrade Caffe L’affare coffee, Kokako drinking chocolate, Scarborough Fair Black Tea and Whittaker’s chocolate as well as a bunch of great resources about Fairtrade to share with your guests.  It’s helping to raise money for our friends at Oxfam and their work with struggling coffee growers in the developing world. Great cause-  get your baking pants on and show us what you’re made of sign up.

If you do, drop us a line and we’ll see if we can hook you up with some ‘nanas for your baking too.

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Our Give A Bunch campaign with KidsCan to help Kiwi kids in need went South this week when we delivered our first batch of Fairtrade bananas to the breakfast club at Christchurch’s North New Brighton School. We met Principal Brian and the two lovely ladies that host the ‘Breakfast Club’ Alice & Betty. The kids were over the moon to get a banana for breakie!

Everyone at North New Brighton School has had a pretty tough time this past year.

Due to the earthquakes, the school lost use of the library, school hall (used for weekly assembly, sports and other activities), staff room and the pool. At least 50 windows were smashed and the grounds had liquefaction. A lot of families were also badly affected at home.

All Good Fairtrade Banana Jam… is here! Not quite a new product line (just yet). This little beauty has been created by Wellington blogger Lucy aka The Kitchenmaid and will compete this weekend in the third annual Wellington Jam Off taking place at City Market on Wellington’s waterfront.

It’s a bona fide feel good jam made with our All Good Fairtrade bananas, Fairtrade sugar and Fairtrade cinnamon too. “It’s really good spread on homemade bagels, dolloped on Greek yoghurt, used to sandwich a sponge or even stirred into porridge,” says Lucy. Could that sound any yummier?

This little beauty is jam packed with All Goodness – we think it’s guarenteed to woooooooo judges. It’s already taken a top gong at All Good HQ.

Why do we give a bunch? Watch our video to see why we’re working with KidsCan to give bananas to Kiwi Kids who need a hand, and what you can do to help.

Kiwis like everyone to have a fair go. It’s why you’ve already helped over 900 kids in El Guabo go to school by buying All Good Fairtrade bananas.

It’s also why we think you’d like to do something to help kids in our own backyard who are going without the basics.

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Our friends at KidsCan have been helping schools for the past six years with basic items like food, raincoats and shoes. So they were the perfect people to let us know how best to help. We were a bit ashamed to learn that one in four Kiwi kids turn up hungry to school. It’s pretty hard to learn when the hungry tummy monsters attack! One of the key things KidsCan mentioned was, often these kids weren’t getting any fresh fruit in their diet at all.

So, we’d like you to help us give fresh bananas to kids who really need it. KidsCan have recommended schools that will really benefit from a regular supply of fresh bananas, and the bananas will be given out at the schools’ discretion to those who need them most.

With your help, we want to give away 5,000 bunches (roughly 25,000 bananas). For every like we get on Facebook, we’ll give one bunch of bananas to a school. We already have enough likes from our existing fan base to deliver bananas to our first school for a year. So, help us to deliver more. The more likes we get, the more schools we can deliver to. Just click here or on the image above.

And don’t forget to tell your friends.

Yes! We have no bananas. We have no bananas today!

This is a public broadcast message from the team at All Good Bananas.

Sadly, our bananas missed the boat. It means we will have limited supply over the next few days. We promise with all our hearts that we will be back in full force as soon as possible.

And apologise in advance about the singing (no bananas were harmed in the making of this music video).

Over the summer holidays there were a few stories in the media about the ethical and green claims found on products in our supermarkets. A series of articles in The New Zealand Herald took a look at what’s behind green and ethical labeling.

Although our summer reading usually involves lying on the beach with a good book or the sports section it was helpful to see some of the evidence behind these claims explained and challenged. After all there are more and more green and ethical products to choose from in the shops these days.

Our friends at Ecostore wrote an insightful blog on this, aptly named “When it comes to green claims who can we trust?” They ask how we tell if a product is healthier, greener or fairer than any other product on the supermarket shelves?

At the end of the day, that’s exactly what it comes down to. Who can we trust?

Why would we be expected to know the chemical ingredients, provenance and politics behind all the products we buy. Especially when we take an average of less than 5 seconds to choose a product in a supermarket…. (read on)

Many companies sticker their food with ethical claims to appeal to our growing concerns about the environment, social justice and health. And, because they’re so big and we’re so busy we don’t really question these claims – we trust them.

As customers we expect the companies that sell us food to tell us the truth – that’s only fair.

And as a company bringing you Fairtrade bananas we take the trust people place in us very seriously. You don’t have to take our word for it when we claim we’re helping to improve the quality of the bananas we bring you, the lives of small banana famers, the land where they’re grown and the inequality of international trade. We’re certificated by standards that have been around long before greenwashing was invented and we’re proud to wear the world’s most recognised ethical label – Fairtrade.

Established in 1990 Fairtrade is an independent third-party certification that gives you certainty. When you buy a Fairtrade certified product you can believe all the claims behind it because, as Harriet Lamb who leads the Fairtrade Foundation says, “Fairtrade trusts no none”. It’s a rigorous system that’s audited annually and effectively addresses the imbalance of power in trading relationships between developed and developing nations.

And the beauty of Fairtrade it is that it isn’t charity, it’s entrepreneurship that benefits everyone involved and allows producers to determine their own destiny.

• Fairtrade farmers receive a higher price than if they sell their bananas in conventional markets.*
• Fairtrade banana farmers are less vulnerable to poverty. In Ecuador, where All Good bananas comes from, 75% said income and wellbeing had improved in the last three years. 75% reported improvements in health and food and 66% improvements in children’s education thanks to Fairtrade.*
• Fairtrade leads to better working conditions on banana plantations, such as health and safety provisions, paid leave and strengthening women’s rights.*
• Fairtrade banana markets are secure with supply and demand being evenly matched, meaning producers have buyers for their bananas.*
• Fairtrade protects producers from the direct impact of banana price wars.*

* FLO Report (December 2011)

Some companies claim to have come up with schemes that are better than Fairtrade because they deal directly with growers. Without credible independent verification there is no real way you can judge these claims are true or that the economics of these relationships are sustainable. Who has the time to go and scrutinize every tick and enforce labour, health and welfare rights and environmental standards?

Fairtrade’s recognition and success attracts some detractors and a few are quick to point out the things they perceive are failings saying it’s expensive. We firmly believe Fairtrade certification the best way we have available to help you choose a banana that benefits the people who grow it, the land it’s grown in and offers you the best quality. And that this is worth an extra dollar.

Fairtrade may not always be perfect – who is. But the Fairtrade Foundation is always looking at how the system works and where they can do things better. In December 2011 they reported on the positive impact Fairtrade standards and commerce have on the lives of small banana producers around the world. Along with the benefits, a few of which we’ve outlined above, they’ve come up with further recommendations acknowledging that Fairtrade itself isn’t a “cure-all for the gripping poverty facing small farmers and plantation workers.” It may not be, but it is a good start. View the report.

Researchers from Otago University are calling for clearly defined national standards on ethical claims. This is a brilliant idea. Kiwis deserve to be able to easily recognise and trust good products that are good for them. Until then, be vigilant.

The next time you reach for an organic, fairly traded, environment friendly product, take a few extra tenths of a second to check that what’s on the label can be verified. And if it’s a banana you’re looking for – choose Fairtrade.

It’s been an epic year, and we couldn’t have done it without support from you.

So give yourself another pat on the back.

For the second year running you’ve helped 430 Family farms in El Guabo, Ecuador to earn a fair price for their crop. Kiwis have eaten over 12 million Fairtrade bananas generating $170,000 in Fairtrade premium. And over $1.6 million has gone back to the families growing All Good bananas.

The Fairtrade premium is also supporting 17 schools, 900 children, a special needs school and a medical centre.

Thanks for joining the good guys and thanks for fostering a peaceful world that’s free and fair for everyone.