WW, there are lots of problems with the "Fairtrade" scheme for coffee (comments apply to Mexico). (This will be long-winded, so don't read unless your interest in the matter is high!
1. The good land, temperate lower mountain slopes above 3000 feet, is not in the hands of the pickers, but owned by well-to-do planters of Mexican citizenship, but may be from Europe or North America.
2. The coffee producer must be large enough to ride out a bad year, spend time cultivating a uniform strain of trees, and provide pest control in uniformity with other growers in the area. It takes up to five years of careful cultivation for decent cherries to develop from nursery-produced young trees of uniform strain. Picking of the ripe cherries is where the heavy labor comes in. One picker can gather enough cherries in a day to produce only 20 pounds of green beans. Cherries not ripe enough are left to be picked a few days later. Each tree produces at most 2 pounds of beans a year so large plantations are required in order to make an income-producing crop (genetic engineering may help here). Pulping and fermentation equipment is expensive. The cleaned beans are dried on large areas of concrete, and must be turned frequently for even drying- one layer only!. Hand inspection of the beans is necessary for the higher grades.
3. The beans must be sold to the buyers (the producr is affected by market conditions here), packed, must meet taste tests, roasted and be blended (unless it is being sold as a high grade pure strain). This is the start of a large additional increase in the cost of the bean to the consumer. The very small producers have no place in the system unless they can cut a deal with a larger producer who has a marketing connection.
The Indios in some areas have been given small fields and may even have a local cooperative, but the land is not suited to coffee that will produce stable income, and is worked for subsistence. The Indios working the coffee plantations are illiterate- 2-3 years of schooling at most and that intermittent. Grassroots political groups are discouraged, with the use of the Army if necessary (see reports from Chiapas, the best coffee area). If the locals protest, more Indios are allowed in from Guatemala. It suits the Mexican agricultural and marketing elite to have a body of Indios that can work for subsistence wages.
Skipping over the progression through increasingly large marketers, then you have the various problems of quotas, protected trade areas, import restrictions, etc., etc. On top of all of this is our wholesaling system, which cannot handle small amounts of a product economically.

Coffee is not produced on the Canadian prairies, of course, but sugar is. Sugar sold in the stores here is from Canadian prairie sugar beets. Restrictions prevent the marketing of imported sugar except for a few special purpose sugars for specific uses. In other words, there is no market here for "Freetrade" sugar. Candy makers and other commercial users may have exemptions, but usually this is in the form of a sugared ingredient- such as bulk chocolate of the various types from the Belgians, Dutch, Nestles, Cadbury, Hershey, etc. which is then processed into candies, etc.
Few people realize the obstacles involved in getting an agricultural product to market.