After several years of the US fair trade movement quietly searching for its identity behind the scenes, three interesting initiatives have come to the foreground almost simultaneously that will surely influence the FT movement in the near future. I don’t know what y’all are thinking, but I think we should check them out. Sound good?

Well okay then, in order to understand why these three initiatives have emerged in 2010 and how they have influenced each other, it seems like we should take a look at the recent history of the fair trade movement in the United States in order to place it into context.

Although many fair trade organizations existed in the US well before the late nineties, it was the birth and rise of TransFair USA that consolidated and transformed US fair trade into a force to be reckoned with. Through the leadership of Paul Rice and other very business savvy operatives, TFUSA quickly ushered the idea of FT into the mainstream by the creation and aggressive marketing of “the label”. While this paid some immediate dividends in terms of familiarizing consumers with a brand, alternative traders and NGOs in the FT movement became increasingly uneasy with TFUSA’s strategy of signing up big and non-commited companies to promote quick volume increases of FT certified products at minimum standards. This strategy marked a stark contrast from the idea of putting time and resources into developing a clear and alternative strategy to the existing “free market”– the system that spawned the need for fairer trade in the first place. The growing perception among alternative traders and small producers was that TFUSA had chosen a purposeful course not to make trade fair, but rather to make it a little less unfair some of the time.

As this mainstreaming became more the focus of TFUSA’s strategy– and when stakeholder concerns bumped up against the closed doors and deaf ears of TransFair– “mission-based” fair traders began to leave the TF system. Just Coffee Co-op left in 2004 with other roasters in Co-op Coffees. Other ATOs reluctantly stayed in the TF system, but  many amped up their criticism and public questioning of TFUSA’s motives and tactics. This dissatisfaction has further increased as the fair trade minimum standards have become stagnant with coffee minimum prices that have only increased a few cents per pound over a twenty year period. TF and their parent organization FLO have been slow to address this issue and there is an strong appearance that they are under pressure from the corporate licensees to keep these prices low.