Although coffee remains the most popular fair trade product, Fair Trade USA certifies a variety of product categories, including tea, cocoa, sugar, spices, honey, produce, grains, wine and spirits, flowers, apparel and home goods, and body care.

[8] Green Mountain Coffee partnered with musical groups Michael Franti & Spearhead and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals[9] to broadcast live concerts promoting Fair Trade.

Serious methodological problems arise in sampling, in comparing prices, and from the fact that the social projects of fair trade do not usually aim to produce economic benefits.

It also makes it impossible to argue that any positive or negative changes in the living standards of farmers are due to Fairtrade rather than to one of the other donors.

[17] There have been claims that adherence to fair trade standards by producers has been poor and that enforcement of standards by Fairtrade is very weak, notably by Christian Jacquiau[18] and by Paola Ghillani, who spent four years as president of Fairtrade Labelling Organizations[18] There are many complaints of poor enforcement problems: labourers on fair trade farms in Peru are paid less than the minimum wage;[19] some non-Fairtrade coffee is sold as Fairtrade[20] 'the standards are not very strict in the case of seasonally hired labour in coffee production.

[20] A lot of volunteers do unpaid work for firms, or market fair trade in schools, universities, local governments or parliament.

Crane and Davies'[24] study shows that distributors in developed countries make 'considerable use of unpaid volunteer workers for routine tasks, many of whom seemed to be under the (false) impression that they were helping out a charity.'

[27] It has been argued that the approach of the fair trade system is too rooted in a Northern consumerist view of justice which Southern producers do not participate in setting.