Roger

P.S. I have posted all — and will post — my challanges at SBX Fairtrade & Me, rather than my main blogs Easy Green or Observaitons

So even though I do think that FLO, the org that does the certification, should move toward allowing plantations and indiv. farmers to get fair trade certification, I have to say I really question this plantation owner’s contention that fair trade is “worthless.” It seems, to me, that he may have a personal beef with the organization. Perhaps understandable, as his plantation, by default, isn’t allowed to get certified whether or not it is socially responsible — but I still feel that it’s a rather broad generalization, to say the least, to claim that fair trade is worthless.

Besides this one plantation owner’s word, have you had any other evidence pointing to fair trade’s worthlessness? Because at this point, I’ve talked to a great many coffee roasters and fair trade-related organizations. And none of these — even the companies that’ve opted against certification due to differences with either FLO or Transfair (the org that licences coffee roasters in the US as fair trade) — have ever said that fair trade is worthless. In fact, many are quick to point out that they have similar goals as the fair trade movement — just different ideas as to how these goals may be best achieved, which you can read more about in my Coffee Crisis series.

Honestly, if there are widespread claims that fair trade is worthless, I’d like to know. But I do need more than she-said-he-said evidence.

And my ongoing admiration to Green LA Girl for her bulldog tenacity w/ all this, awesome!

Transmogrifier — It’s really wonderful that both Cindy and Major took major chunks out of their days to communicate with me :) I am, however, still trying to decide whether this wonderfulness is relegated to the CSR department, or actual changes will be made in the company as a whole — Hopefully the latter!