A Better Choice for Your Palm Sunday Celebration
When your congregation purchases Eco-Palms through LWR, you know that the harvesters were paid fairly for them and that your purchase helps protect important forests and sustainable livelihoods in the harvesting communities.
ORDER ECO-PALMS for 2012
Why did LWR start the Eco-Palms program?
Americans purchase as much as $4.5 million worth of palms each year-most for church celebrations. Profits from those sales could do great things for the poor communities in Latin America where the palms are harvested. But via traditional trade channels, very little of that money reaches the palm harvesters and their communities.
In the typical palm trade:
- Large floral export firms encourage over-harvesting: they pay by volume for palms and then throw away large amounts that aren’t export quality.
- Over-harvesting damages forests where the palm plants thrive.
- Forests are depleted and palm-selling communities lose this important source of income.
How are Eco-Palms different?
- The palms are gathered and sold in a socially and environmentally just way.
- Harvesters are paid a fair price per palm based on quality, so they take fewer palms out of the forest, which protects important nature reserves.
- Community members sort, package and sell the palms themselves — not via middlemen — so more of the money paid for the palms stays with the people who worked the hardest to provide them.
- Because there is a steady market for the palms, locals are motivated to protect the forests (their source of income), ensuring harvests well into the future.
- Communities earn a $.05 per palm premium for all palms sold through this program for Palm Sunday.
Lutheran World Relief partners with the University of Minnesota Center for Integrated Natural Resources and Agricultural Management to make these Eco-Palms available.
