Good Salt.

100% Responsible.

0% Hype.

Those are not empty words. Sacred Valley Salt is indeed good salt, and it's not hyped like many varieties of gourmet salt.

But what does "100% Responsible" actually mean? And what about that claim of it being "better than fair trade?"

We'll start off speaking in pretty broad terms, and then we'll get down to the nuts and bolts.

When you choose Sacred Valley Salt, your choice concretely and directly benefits the Sacred Valley and its inhabitants.

A cartoon image of happy people. The people of the Sacred Valley, Peru, are a priority for Sacred Valley Trading Co.

For Sacred Valley Trading Co., “100% Responsible” means treating the people involved in the production of Sacred Valley Salt fairly and with dignity, as well as treating the planet with respect. We will not sacrifice this principle for the sake of higher profits.

Grassy footprints to illustrate the minimal environmental impact on on the area around Maras, Peru from the production of Sacred Valley Salt

When it comes to the environment, Sacred Valley Salt could hardly have a lighter footprint. There is no excavation, pumping, heavy equipment, slag heaps, contaminated runoff, etc. All extraction and collection is done by solar and human power.

A portrait of Señora Vilma, a local resident of Urubamba in the Sacred Valley, Peru

When it comes to people, Sacred Valley Trading Co. strives to make sure that local inhabitants of the Sacred Valley receive not only fair compensation for their salt, their work, and their skills, but also a fair share of the benefits from the sale of their unique resource.

For a foreign company that wants to export salt from the Sacred Valley, the simplest, most profitable approach would be to simply come in, set up shop, bring in their own management and hire local people to do the work. As long as the company pays fair wages and offers good working conditions, few would find fault with this approach. The company would indeed be benefitting the local community to some extent.

But Sacred Valley Trading Co. has gone a big step further. We’ve sought out independent local small businesses to partner with. We’ve negotiated on equal footing and worked out fair and mutually beneficial operating agreements. We’ve also provided some capital assistance to some of these partners to help them ramp up their capacity. On the other hand, we’ve stipulated that our partners must work to support the same principles that we actively uphold. For example, we require that they give hiring preference to single mothers and people with disabilities, (The Peruvian government offers very little social help for people in these situations) and that they pay good wages and offer clean, safe working conditions.

Better than Fair Trade???

How does this approach compare to Fair Trade? Fair Trade is a positive concept, and it has a commendable stated goal of helping producers in developing countries to achieve better trading conditions and promote sustainability. In practice, Fair Trade is highly decentralized and somewhat confusing, since there are so many different Fair Trade certifiers and so many different interpretations of what Fair Trade means. This has given rise to a lot of myths or mistaken assumptions about Fair Trade.

Let's have a look at how Fair Trade actually works. We'll use Sri Lankan tea as an example. (We can't use salt because there are no Fair Trade standards for table salt.)