Fairtrade movement is divided over corporate push for productivity and profits

The mission-driven Fairtrade movement is transforming into a corporate push for productivity and profit.

The cause begun in the 1980s by a Dutch priest and his activist-acolyte to help coffee farmers in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca now includes some of the world’s biggest sellers of coffee (Nestlé), lingerie (Limited Brands), chocolate (Kraft Foods Inc.’s Cadbury unit) and bananas (Wal-Mart Stores), to name a few.

But the push to increase sales of goods deemed to be free of child labor and other practices has divided the movement.

Original source: Bloomberg