In the first half of the 1900’s there were many small movements and discussions about providing fair wages and working conditions for workers in some of the world’s poorer regions. There were efforts from church groups purchasing crafts directly from southern communities to world powers trying to manipulate commodity prices to sustain poorer countries.

Towards the end of World War II, Oxfam UK started to initiate projects where they purchased products directly from the people they were trying to support. In the 1960’s, United Kingdom and Netherlands became the main initiators of fair trade practices. From commodities like sugar cane, soon expanded to coffee in the early 1970’s.

In Netherlands in the late 1980’s, the first Fair Trade certification was started. It was named after a fictional Dutch character ‘Max Havelaar’, from a book (Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company) where he opposed the exploitation of coffee pickers in Java and Indonesia (both colonies of Netherlands). The Max Havelaar label soon stood for a standardized system of Fair Trade coffee.

Even though fair trade coffee grew in most European countries, it wasn’t until 1997 in Canada and 1998 in the US when those two countries first certified fair trade coffee for sale.

For more information about the history of fair trade coffee, please visit the TransfairUSA.org website or the transfair.ca website

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