Strategic Entry into Fair Trade Markets: A Brazilian Case Study

The Brazilian Landless Rural Workers Movement, commonly known by its Portuguese acronym MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem-Terra), is the largest social movement in Latin America, with hundreds of thousands of active participants. For more than 20 years, the MST has led the opposition to Brazil’s increasing agricultural consolidation among highly-mechanized industrial farms, advocating instead for the continued viability of small scale agriculture. The objective of the workshop was to identify the options available to the MST in order to export agricultural products, specifically cachaça, brown sugar, erva mate, and tea, into the US fair trade market. Toward that end, the team provided the MST with a survey of the US-Brazil trade and regulatory framework, a general overview of fair trade, and an analysis of the experiences of Brazilian cooperatives that have successfully entered and sustained partnerships in the fair trade market.