Abstract Governing through standards has gained significant academic traction, particularly through discussions of global value chains and instruments of neoliberal private authority. Drawing from ethnographic work, I utilize examples from the tea industry in Tanzania to characterize the pragmatic nature of how standards govern at a distance in local contexts. These examples are the: 1) use of Fairtrade funds to fulfill community obligations; 2) participation in value chain actors’ bids for external technical assistance; and 3) participation in donor-funded projects unrelated to standards schemes, yet enable compliance with certification requirements. The analysis reveals that the nature of these programs is a combination of historically entrenched systems and neoliberal approaches to development. By conceptualizing these standards as agencements, rather than instruments of private regulation, we are able to better capture governmentality in the Foucauldean sense – as the mobilization of standards to provide public goods is a mode of governing that necessarily involves far more actors than the State alone.