Tag Archives: Fair Trade USA

232. And on the seventh day…

2012-01-07 Comments Off on 232. And on the seventh day…

…there was silence.  The U.S. Fair Trade movement as we knew it ended on New Year’s Day, when FTUSA’s split from FLO took effect and its new certification went live.  But a week after the dawn of the FT4All era, there have been no official statements of any kind from Fair Trade USA, or new […]

231. Top posts of 2011

2012-01-04 Comments Off on 231. Top posts of 2011

The final data for the CRS Coffeelands Blog for 2011 are in.  Google Analyticator tells me that the Fair Trade USA split from Fairtrade International was the year’s top storyline — related posts took the top five spots. Here are the 10 posts that were most frequently visited in 2011: 1.  Paul Rice makes the […]

221. The New York Times frames the FT4All debate

2011-11-23 Comments Off on 221. The New York Times frames the FT4All debate

When FTUSA decided a few months ago to fundamentally rewrite the rules of Fair Trade for the U.S. market, the news hit the Fair Trade fold with all the force of an earthquake.  The aftershocks have been making themselves felt for weeks: position statements by smallholder farmer networks, governance shake-ups at competing certifiers, ranging debates […]

217. The FT4All debates: A summary

2011-11-10 Comments Off on 217. The FT4All debates: A summary

On Halloween, I published a post summarizing everything written here on the Fair Trade for All debate and promised to leave this issue alone for a while.  With new information continuing to emerge in this evolving process, it has proven harder than I thought to keep my word.  Yesterday I published three more new posts […]

215. Finding balance in the FT4All debates

2011-11-09 Comments Off on 215. Finding balance in the FT4All debates

Just over a month ago, Fair Trade USA CEO Paul Rice sat down for a few hours with CRS staff to make the case for Fair Trade for All, the controversial initiative that is re-writing the rules for Fair Trade Certified coffee in the United States.  I published the notes of that discussion here, and […]

214. From a single origin, different paths to market

Comments Off on 214. From a single origin, different paths to market

Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista government in Nicaragua may get mixed reviews these days from voters on its commitment to democracy.  But during the 1970s, the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua was a romantic crusade against dictatorship that united diverse elements of Nicarguan society and served as a beacon to many young people around the world.  During the […]

213. Merling Preza makes the case against FT4All

Comments Off on 213. Merling Preza makes the case against FT4All

Merling Preza is the general manager of PRODECOOP, a pioneering Fair Trade organization in Nicaragua that she helped to create in 1993, along with Fair Trade USA CEO Paul Rice.  In that role she leads 2,300 smallholder farmers in their efforts to forge deeper trading relationships and foster the development of their communities.  She is […]

211. Fair Trade for All: A summary

2011-10-31 Comments Off on 211. Fair Trade for All: A summary

(NB: An updated version of this summary, including links to new content, was published on 10 November 2011.) A few weeks ago I was pulled into a meeting with Paul Rice from Fair Trade USA that sent this blog swerving off its normal path and into a collision course with controversy.  For the past month […]

210. Bill Fishbein debates Fair Trade for All

2011-10-24 Comments Off on 210. Bill Fishbein debates Fair Trade for All

In 1962, President Kennedy gathered Nobel laureates from across the Western Hemisphere at his residence in Washington.  He welcomed them by saying that the White House had never had before seen such a gathering of intellect, with the possible exception of the evenings when Thomas Jefferson dined alone. Bill Fishbein may be no Thomas Jefferson, […]

209. Bill Fishbein against FT4All

Comments Off on 209. Bill Fishbein against FT4All

Bill Fishbein, co-founder of Coffee Kids and founder of the Coffee Trust, published two comments in response to my recent post on FTUSA’s Fair Trade for All vision that were too good not to run as posts unto themselves.  In the first, which appears below, he argues against FT4All in a long and passionate comment […]