* * * Public Statement for Immediate Release * * *

United Students for Fair Trade Withdraws Support from Fair Trade USA/Transfair - Calls for Reform to Fair Trade Standards

As an independent and integral voice in the Fair Trade movement, United Students for Fair Trade has held many meetings to conclude on where we stand on Transfair/Fair Trade USA's recent decision to leave FLO.

We are deeply concerned by FT USA's move to leave FLO and many other decisions made preceding it.

We have analyzed the potential consequences of the new changes and have decided that the moves FT USA is making will be detrimental to the progress the movement has achieved for producers and artisans all over the world. These lowered standards undermine the Fair Trade values producers, activists, and consumers have advocated for since the inception of the Fair Trade movement in the late nineties. Since this time, public outcry from community stakeholders to uphold the integrity of the standards have repeatedly fallen on deaf ears at Transfair/Fair Trade USA. We have therefore concluded that until these community stakeholders - small scale farmers, producers, workers, community and student activists, and 100% Fair Trade businesses - can reconvene to assess these changes, we can no longer in good conscience promote Transfair/Fair Trade USA products.

The World Fair Trade Organizations (WFTO) is, as they say on their website, a global authority on Fair Trade. It is a membership organization with the membership limited to organisations that demonstrate a 100% Fair Trade commitment and apply to their 10 Principles of Fair Trade.

Oakland Institute just completed the most thorough investigative report on who's buying land in Africa we've seen yet: "Hedge Funds Grabbing Land in Africa," as BBC called it.

As commodities prices rise and inflation picks up, the OI made the report public, they say, because the number of investors buying up land in Africa concerns them.

For obvious reasons, there isn't much out there about who's buying what and how much in Africa. But what OI has discovered is a small number of investors paying sometimes nothing for large plots of land in some African countries.