We Talk About Fair-Trade Coffee. Maybe It’s Time We Talk About Fair-Trade Wildcrafting.
Alberta Wildcraft
We Talk About Fair-Trade Coffee. Maybe It’s Time We Talk About Fair-Trade Wildcrafting.
Wild ingredients may grow freely in nature. The labour, knowledge and responsibility required to harvest them do not.
Most of us understand the basic idea behind fair-trade coffee.
There is a person at the beginning of that product's journey.
Someone grew it.
Someone tended it.
Someone harvested it.
And over time, consumers began asking an important question:
If we're willing to pay a premium for the finished product, shouldn't we care whether the people at the beginning of its supply chain were fairly valued too?
We think wildcrafting deserves a similar conversation.
Wild Does Not Mean Free
There is something unusual about working with wild ingredients.
Nobody planted the spruce tree.
Nobody sent the forest an invoice for producing resin.
The ingredient itself grew without us.
But that does not mean bringing it from the forest into the hands of a maker costs nothing.
A wildcrafter may spend hours driving into the bush before harvesting even begins.
Then comes locating productive areas, identifying species, walking through the forest, searching individual trees, collecting material piece by piece and eventually carrying everything back out.
There is fuel involved.
Equipment.
Transportation.
Physical labour.
Time.
And perhaps most importantly, knowledge.
Nature provided the ingredient.
The wildcrafter provided the labour.
Those are not the same thing.
Every Part of the Supply Chain Has Value
Fair compensation doesn't mean pretending that a pound of raw material is worth the same amount as a pound of finished product.
It isn't.
There is considerable work that happens after a wild ingredient leaves the forest.
Cleaning has value.
Processing has value.
Manufacturing has value.
Packaging has value.
Marketing has value.
Shipping and fulfillment have value.
Running a business has expenses and risk.
And yes, a business needs to make a profit if it is going to continue operating.
But there's another piece of that chain that shouldn't disappear simply because it happens first.
Harvesting has value too.
The person who spent the day in the forest created part of the value that eventually exists in the finished product.
Without the harvest, there is nothing to process.
What Is a Fair Price for a Wildcrafter's Labour?
That's not a question with one universal answer.
Different materials require different amounts of work. Geography changes. Travel changes. Abundance changes. Quality changes. Markets change.
But perhaps the conversation shouldn't begin with:
“What's the least we can buy this for?”
Maybe it should begin with:
“What does it actually cost a knowledgeable wildcrafter to responsibly bring this material out of the forest?”
That's a very different question.
And we think it's one worth asking.
Fair Pay Can Also Be a Sustainability Issue
There's another side of this conversation that goes beyond money.
Wild ingredients aren't manufactured on demand.
We don't control how much resin a forest produces.
Nature does.
That's why we believe the economics surrounding wild harvesting deserve careful thought.
When compensation is based entirely on pounds collected, there is an obvious economic incentive:
Collect more.
Earn more.
Piece-rate compensation isn't automatically irresponsible, and responsible wildcrafters can absolutely be paid by weight.
But when working with wild resources, we believe the incentives surrounding harvesting deserve attention too.
The goal should never become extracting the greatest possible number of pounds simply because more material means more money.
The forest isn't a factory, and wild ingredients aren't an unlimited commodity.
Responsible Wildcrafting Has to Include Stewardship
To us, sustainability isn't simply about whether the finished product is natural or biodegradable.
It starts much earlier than that.
It starts in the forest.
What was harvested?
How was it harvested?
How much was taken?
What was left behind?
Who made those decisions?
And did the person collecting the material have the knowledge and incentive to think beyond today's harvest?
Sustainability isn't only about what happens to a product after you're finished with it. It's also about what happened before that product ever existed.
Why This Matters So Much to Us
At Alberta Wildcraft, Ron and I currently personally harvest the resin used in our spruce gum.
It's not simply how we obtain an ingredient.
It's one of our favourite parts of what we do.
We love the drives.
We love exploring new areas.
We love walking through the forest together.
We love finding a productive tree after searching for what feels like forever.
And yes, we even love coming home exhausted and covered in resin with buckets sitting in the back of the vehicle.
The harvest is part of Alberta Wildcraft.
It isn't simply procurement.
We aren't simply makers who need resin.
We're wildcrafters who make something from the resin we harvest.
What If We Grow?
Honestly, we don't know whether we'll ever change the way we do this.
Maybe Alberta Wildcraft will always be limited by how much the two of us can personally and responsibly harvest.
We're okay with that.
But if there ever comes a day when we choose to work with other wildcrafters, there are principles we already know we would want to protect.
Their knowledge would matter.
Their harvesting practices would matter.
Knowing where the material came from would matter.
Transparency with our customers would matter.
And their labour would deserve fair compensation.
Growth should never require us to lose the connection to the forest that made us fall in love with this work in the first place.
Maybe Wildcrafting Needs Its Own Fair-Trade Conversation
We're not suggesting that wildcrafting and the international fair-trade movement are identical.
They're not.
But the underlying question is worth borrowing:
Who is creating the value at the beginning of the supply chain, and are they receiving a fair share for the work they contribute?
As wildcrafted products become more popular, we would love to see this become part of the conversation.
We'd love to see wildcrafters understand the value of their knowledge.
We'd love to see makers know exactly where their ingredients came from.
We'd love to see consumers asking questions about sourcing and traceability.
And we'd love to see businesses succeed without success requiring the people at the beginning of the supply chain to undervalue themselves.
Questions Worth Asking
If you purchase wildcrafted products — whether they're tree resins, mushrooms, herbs, berries or something else entirely — consider asking a few questions.
Who harvested the ingredient?
Does the maker know where it came from?
Can the supply chain be traced?
Was it harvested with stewardship in mind?
If independent wildcrafters were involved, was their contribution treated as valuable?
Those questions don't attack wildcraft businesses.
They help build a stronger wildcraft industry.
Know Your Source. Value the Harvester. Respect the Forest.
Wildcrafting gives us the extraordinary opportunity to create something valuable from what nature provides.
That opportunity also comes with responsibility.
To the land.
To the people doing the work.
And to the customers trusting the stories behind the products they purchase.
Maybe someday the wildcraft industry will have its own widely recognized standard for fair sourcing.
Until then, each of us gets to decide what those words mean within our own businesses.
For Alberta Wildcraft, our philosophy is simple.
Know your source.
Value the harvester.
Respect the forest.
Because a premium wildcrafted product shouldn't require someone else's labour — or the forest itself — to be treated as cheap.
Continue Reading
What Does “Wildcrafted” Really Mean?
Go behind the scenes of Alberta Wildcraft's Canadian spruce gum and learn about personally harvesting resin, traceability, processing and the journey from forest to tin.
READ: WHAT DOES WILDCRAFTED MEAN?