Fair Trade Blog

Fair Trade USA is transforming its Agricultural Production Standard to better meet today’s challenges. APS 2.0 moves beyond compliance, emphasizing producer-led solutions, flexibility, and measurable outcomes—ensuring resilient, equitable supply chains that adapt to real-world conditions and drive lasting change.

How does Fair Trade Certification make a difference? Dive into Fair Trade 101 to get to understand our mission, model, and how you can get involved.

Education is a core part of Fair Trade's global impact. See how our partners are helping fund education around the world, building bright futures and setting communities up for success.

The Fair Trade team headed to Baru, Indonesia to meet with local fishers and see how certification has changed their industry for the better.

How do producers use Fair Trade Community Development Funds to build thriving, resilient communities? Our team surveyed workers from 9 countries to find out.

Fair Trade Community Development Funds help communities use their expertise to build resilience, support critical projects, and create opportunities for growth.

Fair Trade USA celebrates the distribution of $100 Million in Community Development Funds to Factory Workers

Fair Trade standards empower climate action around the globe. In honor of Earth Day, explore stories from Fair Trade producers.

Kauai Coffee Company sits down for a Q&A on their partnership with Fair Trade Certified

Our partnership with Acorn is a step toward climate justice, ensuring that farmers—who bear great burdens from climate change—have fair access to economic opportunities in the carbon economy.

We are committed to ensuring farmers and workers get a fair price for their goods and a fair wage for their labor. Learn how Fair Trade Certification helps to increase income in 5 ways.

NatureSweet is setting an industry standard for social responsibility. Their dedication to transforming the lives of agricultural workers is aligned with and affirmed by the values of both Fair Trade USA and B Lab.

Fair Trade Coconut manufacturers share how their certification has helped advance education in their communities.

At Fair Trade USA, DEI isn't up for debate—it's a part of our DNA. Hear from our team on how we're advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Hear from the Fair Trade USA Leadership Team on how Fair Trade flowers are making a difference

Hear from Felipe Arango on how Fair Trade USA is looking to the future and what we're prioritizing in 2025.

Discover how Fair Trade USA amplifies worker voices to improve working conditions globally. Learn about our innovative survey process and the impact of real-time feedback from workers.

Fair Trade USA’s global impact is backed by the real stories from our global community. Learn about the impact of Fair Trade from workers in Cambodia, Argentina, and Colombia.

We are investing in a strategic, impact-driven innovation plan to make Fair Trade accessible to all producers, workers, businesses, and consumers, and dramatically scale impact for farmers, fishers, and workers worldwide.

Fair Trade Certified offers companies a valuable tool for managing and accelerating ESG goals, and measuring sustainability achievements. Learn how leading companies are leveraging Fair Trade for ESG progress.

Fair Trade Certified factories regularly go above and beyond the standard to demonstrate a commitment to sustainability. Learn about inspiring eco-friendly projects established by three of our factory partners!

Fair trade pineapple enables empowerment for farmworkers and communities. Three farmworkers from a pineapple farm in Costa Rica share how their lives have been impacted. Listen to their stories!

We engaged with more than 100 female program participants to understand how Fair Trade Certified has impacted their lives. Here's what they had to say.

Paul Rice, founder and CEO of Fair Trade USA, shares 2023 reflections and highlights from the Fair Trade movement. Read on to learn more!

One billion dollars into this journey, we are ready to reach the next billion, and we aren’t waiting another 25 years to reach it. Fair Trade Month offered the perfect platform to share how we plan to do this and how you can help!

Learn how e.l.f. and Fair Trade USA worked together to create a brand new framework for beauty industry factories to become Fair Trade Certified.

The beauty of Fair Trade Certified flowers is undeniable! In honor of Mother’s Day, we talked to moms of Florecal, a rose farm and processing center, to hear how they have benefitted from Fair Trade.

For farmers, workers, and fishers to prosper and thrive, we need to recognize the interconnectedness between the planet and its people. The Fair Trade Certified program recognizes this connection in three key ways.

Safe working conditions are essential to bettering lives and enhancing sustainability. Learn how Fair Trade standards help meet the need for personal well-being, access to on-site safety equipment, clean drinking water, and proper sanitary conditions.

Our 2023 campaign ‘Purchase with Purpose' will highlight the impact of Fair Trade Certified and encourage businesses and consumers to make better investments with shopping dollars and sourcing decisions that help improve lives and protect the planet.

True Cost Accounting, also known as True Pricing, is the idea that we can determine a price that better accounts for impacts on communities and the environment during the production process.

We began the Needs Assessment Redesign (NAR) project to improve the process Fair Trade Committees follow to scope, establish, and measure the impact of their Fair Trade Premium investments.

Research shows that Fair Trade Community Development Funds have helped improve the lives of families in the Ivory Coast by facilitating access to schooling for children, among other benefits.

Today, a significant amount of the sugar produced by small farmers on the island of Mauritius is exported by the Mauritius Sugar Syndicate as fair trade, supporting local development and improving rural livelihoods.

Learn how Fair Trade Certified standards help foster production practices that preserve the environment and protect the health and quality of life of people throughout the supply chain.

Read about two inspiring Fair Trade participants, Roma Gonju and Suma Mal. Their story illustrates the impact that an entire community can experience when systems are set up to allow women to succeed.

Our theory of change explains how Fair Trade USA™ programs work together to impact the livelihoods of farmers, workers, and fishers over time. Watch a video to learn more about our theory of change!

Fair Trade USA hosted its annual Factory Summit in October. Read highlights from this productive and informative virtual Fair Trade Factory Summit event and get access to the session recordings!

Every October, advocates, be they conscious consumers or businesses, mobilize to support the fair trade movement during Fair Trade Month and we're reminded of the power of collective action.

We attend the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) Expo every year to advance our mission and support the businesses, producers, and other fair trade coffee advocates. Here is what we learned at SCA 2021.

We challenged apparel brands to make new or expanded commitments to fair trade sourcing through our #GetTheSeal Challenge, and called on consumers to ask their favorite brands to join the Challenge.

Fair Trade USA founder and CEO, Paul Rice, shares: "Together, we can and must expand the transformative impact of our movement to millions more farmers, workers, companies, and consumers around the world."

Ten years ago, we started working with fashion brands to promote responsible apparel sourcing that supports the well-being of factory workers. Now, our Factory Program includes not just clothes but also home goods.

Coffee farmers are facing a crisis. "It is hard to believe that the price of coffee barely reaches $1 per pound. Producers are worried, disappointed and frustrated, because with this price, their hopes die."

In Latin American culture, the toxic machista, or hypermasculine male, demands the respect of his children and his wife. Learn how women in the fair trade movement are rising up to challenge this.

Many roses in the U.S. are sourced from from Ecuador and Colombia. Ensure that your long-stemmed symbols of love positively impact the lives of farm workers by looking for bouquets bearing our label.

Explore a few different ways that communities across the world are using Fair Trade Community Development Funds to invest in education and learning opportunities for themselves and future generations.

Six student winners of the Fair Trade USA/Oakland Unified School District essay contest were awarded Pottery Barn gift cards to help them create a more effective home learning environment.

Fair Trade USA has completed nearly 200 interviews with producers around the world to better understand the overarching impact of COVID-19 and where help is needed most. Here's what we learned.

We asked farmers what their most urgent needs are and how we could best support them. Personal protective equipment was a major concern so Fair Trade USA and Timbuk2 partnered together to provide free masks.

We hosted two webinars to discuss the findings from survey outreach and explore the impact of COVID-19 on fair trade farmers, workers, and fishers. We also delved into challenges by industry.

After being separated for ten years, Rendon Vival Felix Belisario and his family find a place to call home. Learn about their story and how fair trade helps reduce poverty and enables sustainable livelihoods.

How is it that an industry upheld by women also leaves women powerless? Fashion, especially fast fashion, is an urgent and crucial women’s issue that we must address. Here's what we can do.

Fair trade certification has helped workers, like Amina, by promoting safer working conditions, improved livelihoods, sustainable production, and the development of knowledge, skills, and resources.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

These are stories about motherhood in covid. This Q&A shares words from women in the fair trade movement around the world that are sometimes funny, heartbreaking, empowering, and everything inbetween.

Indigenous Rights Activist Nikki Sanchez shares her perspective on racial profiling and tells us about her own fight for social justice and how it’s connected to fair trade fashion.

We believe our mission of creating a more equitable global trade model is more important than ever now and are taking this further by making accommodations to our business practices.

Farming families are preparing to send their kids back to school, but the costs can be real challenge. Luckily, your fair trade purchases can make going back to school a little easier for these families.

Fair trade certification has been a lifeline to many coffee farmers when the market fails them, and it’s more important than ever. Here are five common myths about fair trade coffee.

A community in Côte d’Ivoire is investing their fair trade Community Development Funds in rebuilding public schools so they're accessible to every child. Learn more about the projects and impact.