article from the environment section repubblica.it
POWER
The former hippy
triumphs over Mars' Cocoa fair and organic
Shapiro, a former farmer, has merged with his multinational company in convincing the farmers to ensure the quality and the Third World Product
from our correspondent Enrico Franceschini
Howard Yana-Shapiro
LONDON - Someone Whitebeard called, as if it were a version of the various positive and good-natured fairy-tale Bluebeard and Blackbeard. Someone else's mistakes him for an Indian holy man, a yoga instructor or just a former hippie who still believes to be in the sixties. The last definition is partially apt, because Howard-Yana Shapiro, an American of 61 years, is really a former flower child, a "radical", as they say in the U.S., a former protester, as we would say that has not lost the desire to fight for a better world. But no longer lives in the sixties. He understood that in the twenty-first century the struggles to improve the world are fighting in another way.
Two decades ago, Shapiro founded "Seeds for Change" (Seeds for Change), a small production company and information on organic food, sustainable agriculture, environmental protection. Selling seeds for organic farming. Business was good, the company grew, the founder was happy. Then, one day in 1997, came an unexpected offer: Mars, the giant food world, the company known for its chocolate bars with caramel by the same name and for countless other products, wanted to buy "Seeds for Change ".
Shapiro has sold the company but not the soul, although friends give him the "traitor." It is immersed in the culture del profitto di una grande multinazionale e oggi può dire di aver vinto la sua battaglia: nei giorni scorsi la Mars, più grande azienda produttrice di cioccolato al mondo, ha annunciato che d'ora in poi tutta la sua produzione di cacao, per un valore di un miliardo di dollari l'anno, seguirà le norme dell'economia sostenibile: salario minimo garantito per i contadini, biodiversità nello sviluppo dell'agricoltura, conservazione delle risorse acquifere. Una scelta che sarà verificata e certificata dalla organizzazione ecologista Rainforest Alliance, il cui presidente, Tensie Whelan, dichiara al quotidiano Guardian di Londra, dove Shapiro è venuto a presentare la svolta: "L'impegno ambientalista della Mars è unprecedented in the food and benefits for farmers in the Third World, the environment and nature will be tangible. "
sounds like a fable: a prophet of radicalism, a former activist of the civil rights movement, with a beard (now white) and long hair (when he had them - is now completely bald), who joins a multinational capitalism, the number one in its field, and converts to the gospel of ecology and economy on a human scale. A story to film, and maybe someone will turn. He says the main character: "If you are interested in defending the nature, scale of your actions have a decisive importance. If you want to affect reality, you have to move something big. I'm no different from what it was. I grew up with the movement peace against the war in Vietnam. I still want to change the world, helping the poor, improve more lives than you can. And now I'm convinced that, following the example of Mars, the whole food industry will follow this path. "
Son of intellectuals emigrated to America from Russia and Lithuania ("but who could dig the garden, like everyone else in their country of origin") Shapiro today to Mars as the director for global external research. He did not miss the criticism Ethical Consumer, a magazine British ecologist, gave bad ratings to Mars, as well as the Seeds for Change, which continues to exist within the Mars, for lack of respect for the environment, animal testing, operations in oppressive regimes and campaigns against anti-obesity of the EU. But he denies the accusations and puts it on the side of the scale initiatives like the Conference of NGOs and governments, sponsored by Mars in November, to encourage cocoa farmers to plant different crops in Africa to restore vitality to depleted soil. "If you take something from the earth, you have to give something to the ground, "said Whitebeard." Today we do not think the short term but to the world that will exist in a hundred years, that we leave to our grandchildren. "
Two decades ago, Shapiro founded "Seeds for Change" (Seeds for Change), a small production company and information on organic food, sustainable agriculture, environmental protection. Selling seeds for organic farming. Business was good, the company grew, the founder was happy. Then, one day in 1997, came an unexpected offer: Mars, the giant food world, the company known for its chocolate bars with caramel by the same name and for countless other products, wanted to buy "Seeds for Change ".
Shapiro has sold the company but not the soul, although friends give him the "traitor." It is immersed in the culture del profitto di una grande multinazionale e oggi può dire di aver vinto la sua battaglia: nei giorni scorsi la Mars, più grande azienda produttrice di cioccolato al mondo, ha annunciato che d'ora in poi tutta la sua produzione di cacao, per un valore di un miliardo di dollari l'anno, seguirà le norme dell'economia sostenibile: salario minimo garantito per i contadini, biodiversità nello sviluppo dell'agricoltura, conservazione delle risorse acquifere. Una scelta che sarà verificata e certificata dalla organizzazione ecologista Rainforest Alliance, il cui presidente, Tensie Whelan, dichiara al quotidiano Guardian di Londra, dove Shapiro è venuto a presentare la svolta: "L'impegno ambientalista della Mars è unprecedented in the food and benefits for farmers in the Third World, the environment and nature will be tangible. "
sounds like a fable: a prophet of radicalism, a former activist of the civil rights movement, with a beard (now white) and long hair (when he had them - is now completely bald), who joins a multinational capitalism, the number one in its field, and converts to the gospel of ecology and economy on a human scale. A story to film, and maybe someone will turn. He says the main character: "If you are interested in defending the nature, scale of your actions have a decisive importance. If you want to affect reality, you have to move something big. I'm no different from what it was. I grew up with the movement peace against the war in Vietnam. I still want to change the world, helping the poor, improve more lives than you can. And now I'm convinced that, following the example of Mars, the whole food industry will follow this path. "
Son of intellectuals emigrated to America from Russia and Lithuania ("but who could dig the garden, like everyone else in their country of origin") Shapiro today to Mars as the director for global external research. He did not miss the criticism Ethical Consumer, a magazine British ecologist, gave bad ratings to Mars, as well as the Seeds for Change, which continues to exist within the Mars, for lack of respect for the environment, animal testing, operations in oppressive regimes and campaigns against anti-obesity of the EU. But he denies the accusations and puts it on the side of the scale initiatives like the Conference of NGOs and governments, sponsored by Mars in November, to encourage cocoa farmers to plant different crops in Africa to restore vitality to depleted soil. "If you take something from the earth, you have to give something to the ground, "said Whitebeard." Today we do not think the short term but to the world that will exist in a hundred years, that we leave to our grandchildren. "
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