Sandhill Cranberry Farms via Equal ExchangeFair Trade often conjures images of distant lands and foreign cultures. However, Fair Trade is not limited to the Third World and its benefits are realized by all people. There are several organizations within the states that follow the ideal set by the Fair Trade movement.

Equal Exchange has started a "Bringing Fair Trade Home" program which seeks to extend the "model of partnership to family farmers, farm workers, and farmer co-operatives." There are small co-op farms which produce their organic almonds, organic cranberries and pecans. "All are family farmers, and people with a commitment to their communities, to growing delicious, nutritious crops, and to stewardship of the land they work." With U.S. farmers falling from 6.5 million in 1935 to 1.9 million by 2003, and "over 50% of the revenue generated globally by food retailing is accounted for by just 10 corporations", there is a similar need of support to small family farms regardless of their location.

In 2005 Equal Exchange partnered with Organic Valley, the Farmer Direct Co-operative and RAFI-USA, to create the Domestic Fair Trade Working Group with the goal to gather people of similar beliefs from the US and Canada and develop a set of Principles for Domestic Fair Trade "which translates the goals and priorities of the international Fair Trade movement into the regional, domestic and local spheres."
The principles created are similar to the international Fair Trade criteria but tailored to fit small domestic farms: family scale farming, capacity building, democratic co-ops which have participatory ownership and control, rights of labor, equality and opportunity, direct trade, fair and stable pricing, shared risk and affordable credit, long term trade relationships, sustainable agriculture, appropriate technology, indigenous peoples' rights, transparency and accountability, education and advocacy.

Wholesome Harvest, a coalition of farmers in the Midwest, also seeks to bring Fair Trade principles home. Through a network of forty farms, Wholesome Harvest raises organic meat and sells it only to member approved supermarkets. The goal is "to provide absolute traceability, transparency and access to backstory for their customers — a particularly important set of values in the meat industry, where bacterial contamination is more common than in produce, and often can't be traced to the source due to complex networks of national and international distribution." Wholesome Harvest is not limited to farming: they also have several consumer activism projects, including seeking to raise US organic standards, implementing domestic Fair Trade criteria that is as stringent as international standards, buying local meat, labelling products by country of origin, and lifting the limitations on Mad Cow Disease testing in livestock.

Implementing Fair Trade criteria with both international and domestic trade benefits all parties involved. Fair Trade does not help US based workers only when applied domestically, for if it is applied to all countries it would create a level playing field. This means that poor workers in other countries will have a chance to earn a living wage, and domestic workers will be able to compete for jobs as corporation will not be able to move overseas to exploit a lack of workers rights and standards.

Thanks to World Changing.