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Whither Fair Trade?

Mainstream supermarkets are posting the fastest fair trade growth of all channels at 17.1%, but future of the movement is up in the air as the non-profit Fair Trade USA (formerly TransFair USA) plans resign its position as the official U.S. member of Fairtrade Labeling Organizations International (FLO) on Dec. 31. Part of FTUSA's focus — designed to double U.S. sales for fair trade farmers by 2015 — involves expanding its producer network beyond smallholder farmer cooperatives to farmers unable to access the support of a co-op and farm workers employed by plantations and estates that produce coffee, sugar and cocoa.

Under the FLO model, farmer co-ops, unaffiliated farmers and estates and plantations are included in the producer network for fair trade categories like cotton, rice, tea, flowers and bananas in order to meet volume demands, but only smallholder farmer co-ops are included in the schemes for coffee, sugar and cocoa.

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