Case study

This report gives the results of the annual monitoring data collection from Fair trade certified producer organizations which took place during 2011. It presents the scope and scale of Fair trade in 2011, and gives data for some key Fair-trade performance indicators from a producer perspective. This year, for the first time, the report also captures the results of recent Research studies containing evidence about the longer-term impacts of Fair-trade. The information generated through our monitoring and evaluation processes is used to inform and guide the Fair-trade system. It gives us an important indication of how we are performing in relation to our ambitions to strengthen, broaden and deepen Fairtrades impact for farmers and workers in developing countries. Monitoring and evaluation shows us where we are performing well, and where we have challenges to overcome. Being aware of these challenges allows us to reshape our programme activities in order to tackle them. Fairtrade International makes this information public as part of our commitment to transparency, openness, and information-sharing with our stakeholders and supporters. We recognise that there are some shortcomings in the reliability and coverage of the data, and we try to be open about these shortcomings. We hope that you will find the report interesting and useful. We welcome your feedback and comments: these will help us improve future editions of the report. 1.1 Where do the data in this report come from? There are three main sources of data used to generate this report. Data on the number, type, and geographical spread of Fairtrade certified producer organizations and product certifications are drawn from the main certification database held by FLO-CERT GmbH, the Fairtrade certification body. These data capture the number, type and location of Fairtrade producer organizations at the end of 2011. Since some Fairtrade producer organizations are certified for more than one product, we differentiate between producer organizations and product certifications. This data source also gives us information on the numbers of product certifications held by Fairtrade producer organizations. In order to have a more detailed picture of Fairtrade producer organizations and of Fairtrade performance from the producer perspective, Fairtrade International requests FLO-CERT GmbH to collect data for a range of monitoring indicators during the Fairtrade audits. The list of indicators that we collect is given in Box 1.1 below.