Fair Trade For All - the campaign fostering the controversy
In 2011, Fair Trade USA announced that they were going to stop co-operating with the international fair trade organisation, Fairtrade Labeling Organizations International (FLO). The announcement was related to a new campaign, "Fair Trade For All", developed by Fair Trade USA - a business model enabling fair trade certification of coffee grown on large scale production sites.
In the wake of this announcement, seven pilot projects has been introduced in the campaign. The largest of these pilot projects is Ipanema Coffees, the largest coffee plantation in Minas Gerais, Brazil, and in the world! They are certified following the standards developed for farm workers and if the pilot projects were to prove successful Fair Trade USA would expand their certification of plantations to entail cocoa plantations as well. It is uncertain whether Fair Trade For All is considered a success, since it can finish anytime soon, and Fair Trade USA will need time to review it properly. What we do know is that Fair Trade USA currently is formulating a new set of standards, which will be aimed at both smallholders and workers on farms, hereby minimizing the distinction between small-scale and large-scale productions.
In the wake of this announcement, seven pilot projects has been introduced in the campaign. The largest of these pilot projects is Ipanema Coffees, the largest coffee plantation in Minas Gerais, Brazil, and in the world! They are certified following the standards developed for farm workers and if the pilot projects were to prove successful Fair Trade USA would expand their certification of plantations to entail cocoa plantations as well. It is uncertain whether Fair Trade For All is considered a success, since it can finish anytime soon, and Fair Trade USA will need time to review it properly. What we do know is that Fair Trade USA currently is formulating a new set of standards, which will be aimed at both smallholders and workers on farms, hereby minimizing the distinction between small-scale and large-scale productions.
Our investigation of the controversy
The seemingly most prominent actors in the controversy are FLO and Fair Trade USA, since the controversy evolved around their internal disagreements on what is fair in fair trade. However, in our investigation of the controversy, we have researched how this controversy, a controversy very much concerning a debate of local realities, is actually related to a certain geographical field. Our investigation of the question of whether plantation grown coffee can be certified as fair trade, has thus embarked from investigating the largest of the seven coffee estates included in the Fair Trade USA campaign "Fair Trade For All", Ipanema Coffees. This has been done assuming that all actors in the controversy must have something to say about this very place, since the controversy is so much about the issue of the size of a given plantation and its amount of hired workers.
We have investigated the controversy through a actor-oriented investigation design, focussing on how certain important actors articulate their stands and arguments in the controversy. While this has proofed to be beneficial in our research on how the controversy is articulated in the fair trade movement, it has been more difficult in our investigation of the Brazilian network, where it's hard to find actors more involved in the issue than others. While our investigation on how the actors based in Europe and USA thus rely on in-depth research, on how specific single actors articulate their arguments for and against fair trade certification of plantation grown coffee, our research on the Brazilian web has been more about finding voices that even relate to plantation grown coffee as an issue.
We have investigated the controversy through a actor-oriented investigation design, focussing on how certain important actors articulate their stands and arguments in the controversy. While this has proofed to be beneficial in our research on how the controversy is articulated in the fair trade movement, it has been more difficult in our investigation of the Brazilian network, where it's hard to find actors more involved in the issue than others. While our investigation on how the actors based in Europe and USA thus rely on in-depth research, on how specific single actors articulate their arguments for and against fair trade certification of plantation grown coffee, our research on the Brazilian web has been more about finding voices that even relate to plantation grown coffee as an issue.