That means, we know for example, where this banana comes from, and which farmers or workers benefit from the Fair Trade minimum price or premium.

Some products are produced under a system called "mass balance."

That means that even though each individual orange in this juice can't be traced, the orange farmers still get all the same Fair Trade benefits.

Take Maria, an orange farmer.

She's a member of a Fair Trade cooperative, which doesn't have its own processing plant.

So she's dependent on an external factory.

If Fair Trade required every single orange to be traceable, the factory would have to stop the processing of all other oranges in order to process only Maria's oranges.

But this would be much more expensive and therefore only possible with large amounts.

That's why Fair Trade allows mass balance in such cases.

This way, Maria's oranges can be included in the ongoing manufacturing process, where her Fair Trade oranges are mixed with other conventional oranges.

Fair Trade carefully tracks how many oranges Maria has produced and how much juice is made from them.

Only the corresponding amount of juice can be sold with the Fair Trade mark.

According to the exact volume she produces, Maria gets all the benefits of Fair Trade, including stable minimum prices, and the Fair Trade premium for the community projects.

[Fair Trade International]