We’ve all heard of fair-trade coffee, but did you know that it’s also possible to purchase fairly traded rice, dried fruit, tea, spices, coconut oil, and other products?

For almost 20 years, Victoria-based wholesaler Level Ground Trading has been importing consumables directly from producers, eliminating the middlemen.

“Brokers in the Central American coffee business are still called coyotes,” Level cofounder Stacey Toews told the Straight by phone from his office.

Toews, his wife Laurie Klassen, and their business partner, Hugo Ciro, had all witnessed poverty in other countries before they started the company.

According to Toews, they decided to focus on "the everyday things that people put in their body", believing it would be an ideal approach for conveying a message about eradicting poverty.

At the time, Toews and Klassen were adopting their first of three children from Haiti; Ciro and his wife had both lived in South America for most of their lives.

"We've been quite pleased with how quickly consumers will respond to a fair-trade, directly sourced product," Toews said.

He noted that people are pleased to know that they can actually drill down and see a photo of the farmer who was responsible for the product they've purchased. 

Toews explained that his company upholds the dignity of producers by not using a model that involves charity. There's no talk of donations or helping because they see both parties benefiting from their exchanges.

He added that Level Ground Trading does not seek out suppliers in other countries in the same category as its other producers because that would cannibalize existing business partners.

“With coffee, we haven’t added a new country in a number of years,” Toews stated. “It was more obvious for us to move to tea than to go to a seventh country of origin for coffee.”

He revealed that Level Ground Trading’s revenues have reached $9 million annually and it’s the only Canadian company roasting coffee west of Winnipeg recognized as a fair-trade organization.

As Toews spoke, his wife was in Sri Lanka and was about to travel to India for three weeks. Ciro was in Colombia, with his next stop scheduled in Tanzania.

Toews said that Level Ground Trading is trying to build capacity in the countries in which it operates. That sometimes requires 100 percent advance funding on a purchase order so producers have sufficient operating capital.

"Our goal is always maximum value-added in the country of origin," Toews explained. "We're just about to receive our first-ever full freight container of tea from India, and almost all of it will already be packaged, right down to labels and UPC codes."

In October, the company launched new packages for its coffee that are 100 percent compostable.

So what drives him to do this?

"My personal convictions are that God deeply loves people who are poor," Toews replied. "That's the posture from which I want to respond positively: with kindness, with compassion, with thoughtfulness, and with an understanding that people are equal and equally deserve a shot at the market and a decent and dignified lifestyle.

"The fact that I currently parent three children whose birth parents didn't get to parent them speaks volumes about the injustice in the world in which we live in," he continued.

Toews has some advice for consumers interested in fairly sourced products: every company that belongs to the Fair Trade Federation is “full-on, hard-core committed to fair trade—no dabblers”.

“That means our philosophy and our bent is entirely toward the benefit of those with whom we trade,” he said.