A Little Background

It was with the dismantling of the International Coffee Agreement and during the initial years of the current coffee crisis, and the lack of viable governmental solutions, that the concepts for a third-party certified “Fair Trade” market for coffee were born. The promotion of Fair Trade for coffee began in Holland in 1988, bringing together the initiatives of small-scale farmer cooperatives in Mexico with a small group of Dutch initiatives in favor of Fair Trade. Following suit, TransFair International, was founded in Germany in 1992. From this humble beginning, an international network of Fair Traders was born, in the hopes of raising the political and social consciousness of coffee consumers to the plight of small-scale coffee producers around the world.

 By the mid 1990s a “harmonization process” had begun to bring the different national initiatives together under the coordination of a single international body. In 1997, 17 national Fair Trade initiatives formally joined forces through the formation of the Fair Trade Labeling Organizations International (FLO). Under FLO administration, certification expanded from coffee to include several other food products including tea, sugar, cocoa, honey, bananas and orange juice. [1] 

Under the FLO system a single set of criteria is shared among all members for each Fair Trade product area.  One of the key criteria requires that all products be purchased from producers on the FLO registry.  FLO retains responsibility for administering and developing both the criteria and the international producer registry.  The national initiatives, on the other hand retain responsibility for ensuring that all products licensed under FLO, have indeed met the criteria established for the given product area.  Today FLO boasts 19 national members[2] and more than 300 producer organizations around the world.  In 2000, the total turnover of FLO licensed products for its 7 food product areas totaled 150 million USD.[3]