As the year comes to an end and McDonald’s continues to ignore calls to work with the CIW for real labor reform in its tomato supply chain, yet another national organization — this time from the world of student organizing — is throwing its weight behind the Campaign for Fair Food and the national alliance in support of the campaign, the Alliance for Fair Food (AFF).

The United Students for Fair Trade, the coordinating body for over 100 active student Fair Trade organizations in the US, has been an essential force in promoting the principles and products of Fair Trade across the country. The USFT describes its mission on its website:

"The core objective of USFT is to raise the awareness of and expand the demand for Fair Trade alternatives, both on campuses and in communities. Through this process, we redefine relationships between producer and consumer, and engage in the ongoing struggle to build people’s power in the face of corporate-driven globalization."

The USFT is a natural ally for the Campaign for Fair Food and, working together, we are confident that we will be able to bring some of the tremendous success of the Fair Trade movement in the Global South here to US fields, where farmworkers labor in patently unfair conditions at the bottom of the trillion-dollar US food industry.