Some proponents say the adjustments needed to bring companies like Wal-Mart and P&G aboard warp the goal of helping small farmers.

When TransFair CEO Paul Rice sits across from Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott, the differences in their backgrounds couldn’t be more stark.

Scott has spent nearly his entire adult life working at the retail behemoth, with a mandate to increase sales and profits and keep costs as low as possible. Rice, after graduating from Yale University in 1983, spent 11 years working with peasant coffee farmers in Nicaragua trying to squeeze higher prices out of coffee buyers. He set up one of the first cooperatives, with 24 coffee-growing families, who sold their first batch of fair trade product to Europe in 1990 for $1.26 a pound, compared with the 10¢ a pound coffee was selling for in Nicaragua then. “It was an overnight legend in Nicaragua,” recalls Rice. (more…)

THOUGH a consumer may not be able to tell the difference, a striking red and blue Thomas the Tank Engine made in Wisconsin is not the same as one manufactured in China — the paint on the Chinese twin may contain dangerous levels of lead. In the same way, a plump red tomato from Florida is often not the same as one grown in Mexico. The imported fruits and vegetables found in our shopping carts in winter and early spring are grown with types and amounts of pesticides that would often be illegal in the United States.

In this case, the victims are North American songbirds. Bobolinks, called skunk blackbirds in some places, were once a common sight in the Eastern United States. In mating season, the male in his handsome tuxedo-like suit sings deliriously as he whirrs madly over the hayfields. Bobolink numbers have plummeted almost 50 percent in the last four decades, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey. (more…)

From its humble beginnings in the 1950s, fair-trade has developed into a global movement. A new report by Datamonitor reveals that fair-trade sales across Europe, the US, Australia and New Zealand, and Japan have experienced double digit growth since 2002. This growth is being driven by an increased consumer awareness of ethical issues and environmental concerns. (more…)