Tag Archives: FLO

Matchmaking at the SCA Expo

2018-04-11 Comments Off on Matchmaking at the SCA Expo

It’s Spring again… Green is starting to appear in the northern latitudes, the NBA playoffs are just around the corner, you realize that you haven’t filed your taxes yet, and the annual Specialty Coffee Association’s Expo is coming up.  This year will be my fifth consecutive year attending – I’m starting to feel like a “local,” […]

310. A framework for Fair Trade: Exit, voice and loyalty

2012-10-09 Comments Off on 310. A framework for Fair Trade: Exit, voice and loyalty

I have moved four times since I finished graduate school more than 10 years ago.  Precious few of my textbooks have traveled with me through all those long-distance moves.  One that has is a slender, dog-eared volume that advances in relatively few pages an exceptionally robust conceptual framework: Albert Hirschman’s Exit, Voice and Loyalty.  Applying […]

309. Fair Trade and governance, revisited

2012-10-08 Comments Off on 309. Fair Trade and governance, revisited

The Fair Trade Certification system has been convulsed since Fair Trade USA broke ranks with Fairtrade International more than a year ago, introducing its ambitious Fair Trade for All initiative and changing the rules of the game.  The substance of the decision rankled coops and Fair Trade pioneers.  But what seemed to really unite opposition […]

274. The FT4All pilots: What does success look like?

2012-05-22 Comments Off on 274. The FT4All pilots: What does success look like?

Fair Trade USA is rolling out Fair Trade for All pilots with coffee estates and independent smallholder farmers all around the world.  If these pilots succeed, we expect to see more and more of them.  But what does success look like, and how will we measure it? I have had several good discussions of this […]

272. The FT4All debate: It’s getting personal

2012-05-21 Comments Off on 272. The FT4All debate: It’s getting personal

Last September, Fair Trade USA issued two controversial announcements: one about its decision to withdraw from Fairtrade International, the global Fair Trade Certifier formerly known as FLO, and another launching its Fair Trade for All initiative, which rewrites the rules of Fair Trade and opens the U.S. Fair Trade market to coffee estates. In 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 […]

205. Fair Trade for All: Will a rising tide lift all boats?

2011-10-10 Comments Off on 205. Fair Trade for All: Will a rising tide lift all boats?

In a wide-ranging conversation with CRS staff last week, Fair Trade USA CEO Paul Rice defended the decision to break with FLO and open the U.S. market for Fair Trade Certified coffee to estates.  He suggested there are two theories about what will happen to smallholder farmer cooperatives once estates enter the market.  One theory is the zero-sum view that the estates’ […]

201. Fair Trade USA – FLO split: What does it mean for smallholders?

2011-09-30 Comments Off on 201. Fair Trade USA – FLO split: What does it mean for smallholders?

The joint announcement by Fair Trade USA and FLO that the two organizations will be going their separate ways at the end of this year is old news by now.  It is still not entirely clear, however, what the split — and Fair Trade USA’s “Fair Trade for All” initiative, with its promise to “adapt […]

110. Coffee quality: Fair Trade’s competitive advantage

2010-11-25 Comments Off on 110. Coffee quality: Fair Trade’s competitive advantage

Yesterday I suggested that Fair Trade has little to do with quality on the roasting and retail end of the coffee chain. On the sourcing end, however, I believe that there are elements of the Fair Trade model that help certain Fair Trade roasters get a leg up on the competition.