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Fair Trade USA is the largest fair-trade certification agency in the United States. The decisions made at the organization’s offices on Broadway in Oakland ripple throughout the national fair trade movement, and beyond to hundreds of thousands of farmers around the world. But since last fall, following Fair Trade USA’s announcement of major policy changes, the organization has found itself at the center of a growing and often public debate about the future and shape of the fair-trade movement.

The focus of the controversy is Fair Trade USA’s decision to start certifying coffee that is grown on large plantations. The organization says it hopes to expand fair-trade practices beyond the small farms and cooperatives that traditionally have won fair-trade certification. But the move has sparked a strong backlash in the fair-trade community, particularly among small farmers and co-ops who contend that larger plantations will eventually put them out of business.

“The decision of Fair Trade USA to include plantations in the system is a serious threat to the organizations,” said Santiago Paz López, co-manager of CEPICAFE, an association representing small coffee, cacao, sugarcane, and tropical fruit producers in Northern Peru. “The small producers cannot compete with the plantations and large companies that have taken control of the market and of the decisions being made by Fair Trade USA. Fair trade, in Fair Trade USA’s [new] scheme, doesn’t mean anything.”

Fair Trade USA’s new standards for mixed-ingredient products have also come under fire. And the organization’s policy changes, along with its decision to split off from the international group that establishes worldwide standards for fair trade, could result in the Oakland organization losing its dominant position in the US fair-trade movement. In fact, last month the group Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO), which is headquartered in Bonn, Germany, announced that it was going to establish a fair-trade program in the United States. That announcement also promises to be a hot topic of discussion this week at a major conference, the Fair Trade Stakeholder Council Summit, which is to be held in Minneapolis from April 30 to May 2.