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| Rainforest Products | |
| I started Rainforest Cereals in 1991 - a result of my organizing the Grateful
Dead Rainforest Benefit at Madison Square Garden in 1988. I had been a manager
of the Grateful Dead in the late 1960‚s, and had maintained a close
relationship with Jerry Garcia ever since. Both Jerry and Bobby Weir were
on the Creating the Future Board of Directors. Bobby was very active, attending
most Board meetings. Jerry came to a couple of meetings but primarily supported
us in other ways. Bobby asked me to help organize a Grateful Dead Rainforest
Benefit, as I had some success over the years in organizing other Grateful
Dead benefits. I wound up coordinating the benefit which included a press
conference at the UN, obtaining coverage in virtually every daily newspaper
in the country, plus television and news magazines, and creating a post
show party for the thousand VIP sponsors (who paid $250 for the privilege).
The event cleared about $500,000. The beneficiaries were Rainforest Action
Network, Greenpeace, Cultural Survival, Creating Our Future.
The reason Rainforest Products uses Brazil nuts is that they thus far only bear fruit in undisturbed rainforest (there are ongoing attempts to grow Brazil nuts as an orchard crop but none have succeeded). The more value Brazil nuts have, the more incentive there is to maintain the rainforest. Rainforest Products currently buys its Brazil Nuts from Candela Peru, a non-profit Fair Trade Organization located in an area known as the Madre de Dios (about 75,000 square kilometers of rainforest), which assists Brazil nut gatherers by: providing funds via no interest loans which enables gatherers to buy food, fuel, and other essential supplies; providing transportation up and down the rivers in small boats; operating a tree nursery program, planting Brazil nut trees; running a child care center for women cracking nuts; and, most importantly, buying Brazil nuts at above market prices. Here is a complete listing of Rainforest products and ingredients. |
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Where can I buy them - most health food markets |
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I
invited Ben Cohen (of Ben & Jerry‚s) to the post show party where
he met Jason Clay of Cultural Survival. Jason had just come back from
the Rainforest with a variety of products, about which rainforest residents
had told him that if could find a way to sell some, they could continue
to live in the rainforest, but if he failed, they would be driven out.
This led to the development of Rainforest Crunch. The following summer,
both Jason and Ben were speakers at the Creating Our Future summer camp.
We were discussing what should be put on the back of the Rainforest Crunch
box (which at that time referred people to Rainforest Action Network,
Cultural Survival and Creating Our Future) when I said that if we really
wanted people to read the back of a box, we should have a cereal box.
This led to the development of Rainforest Products (packaged cereals with
Brazil nuts from the rainforest), and my first serious venture into the
business world.