The world’s first Fair Trade Certification pilots with independent smallholder coffee farmers are winding down in Colombia. CRS supported one of those pilots. Based on that experience, we offer three recommendations for future pilots: two to ensure they generate the kind of rigorous, results-based evidence we believe should drive decisions about the future of Fair […]
This week, CRS is issuing a series of observations based on our experience in Colombia with the first Fair Trade Certification pilot with independent smallholder farmers, and recommendations for the future of Fair Trade for All. From our perspective, the pilot has been the source of some encouragement as an approach to smallholder organization where […]
When we announced here back in May that CRS would support a Fair Trade for All pilot project with independent smallholder farmers in Colombia, we identified “influence” as a leading motivation: We believe we are uniquely positioned to independently document the impacts of FT4All’s pilots and influence the evolution of the Fair Trade model. Nearly […]
CRS has been working to support smallholder coffee farmers — both in the coffeelands and in the U.S. marketplace — for the better part of 10 years. For most of that time we have kept a low profile, working quietly to help farmers increase coffee productivity, quality and income at origin and expand the market […]
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 […]
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 […]
As I reflect more on The Nation’s excellent article on the split in the Fair Trade movement, I am reminded of a product review by Ritual Coffee, the iconic San Francisco roaster, that included this passage: “Did we once tell you that the Hario Hand Mills were the best hand grinders available? Yes. Are we […]
Over the past few years, I have interacted both online and off with university students and faculty who have incorporated Coffeelands blog content into their studies of agroecology, journalism, sustainable trade, etc. Of particular interest to university readers has been the current split in the Fair Trade movement caused by Fair Trade USA’s Fair Trade […]
The Nation magazine, the venerable weekly that has been a progressive standard bearer since the Civil War, has weighed in on the state of the U.S. Fair Trade movement in its 10 September 2012 issue. In “The Brawl Over Fair Trade Coffee,” The Nation writer Scott Sherman reaches farther and wider than any other coverage […]
Empowerment is a popular term in the fields of international development and Fair Trade. It has been mentioned many times in the current debate over changes to the Fair Trade system — including several times on this blog — by people who are both for FT4All and against it: Ed Canty buys Fair Trade Certified […]
