When I attended the North American Tea Conference this past September, I did not expect to be thinking about bananas, but that is exactly what happened.

Julie Francoeur, executive director of Fairtrade Canada, shared the story of the banana industry during the Wednesday afternoon session on sustainability. She began by giving the room a brief history of banana agriculture and producers’ working conditions. Several primary issues in banana production mirror those in tea, including living income and wages, health and working conditions, water and biodiversity, and freedom of association.

One statement Francoeur made lingered with me: “poverty is the root of all sustainability problems.” Industry challenges including child labour, forced labour, lack of sustainable practices, deforestation, lack of climate change resilience, lack of health and safety practices, and malnutrition can all be traced back to a lack of financial resources.

In the case of bananas, producers received only a small fraction of the sales from a fruit that had become known as one of the least expensive products on the market. This kept producers in poverty, and the sustainability challenges persisted.

To change this, Fairtrade Canada recognised that they could not just increase the price of bananas; instead, they needed to shift consumers’ and retailers’ perceptions of the product’s value. This began by educating both retailers and shoppers about the conditions banana workers face, helping put a face to the product consumers were buying. The value of bananas began to be understood, resulting in consumers intentionally choosing the higher-priced product, knowing that by doing so, they would positively impact the producer’s livelihood.

Based in Montreal, Equifruit is the main distributor of the Fairtrade Canada bananas. The company is also a B Corp and women-led company. Today, one in three organic bananas sold in Canada is Fairtrade certified.

Throughout the conference sessions, attendees were encouraged to reflect on the value of tea and why value matters more than volume. However, shifting the perception of tea is not something that can be done by one company or even one country; it requires the commitment from the entire supply chain.

In one of the final sessions of the event, Dr Timothy Bond of Tea and Herbal Solutions, reflected on the growth of tencha, sharing that in the first half of 2026, the volume of powdered green tea exports in Japan grew to 19.6 percent, and the unit price rose from USD $34 to $61. Consumers are seeing the value in matcha and are willing to invest in it.

Bond urged the industry to explore other powdered formats to create more value-added products, including sourcing matcha from other regions, protein-infused teas, ground rooibos, and micro-milled black tea. However, adding another product to the line-up is not enough to shift consumers perception of its value. Instead, the industry needs to look at the messages it communicates about these products, including how the product is priced and packaged, so that the consumers understand the product’s value and the positive impact of paying a higher price.

Anne-Marie Hardie is a freelance writer, professor and speaker based in Barrie, Ontario. She may be reached at: [email protected].