Fair Trade?

Met with a local coffee roaster – no beans grown locally in NJ. Supporting a small, locally owned business using fair trade coffee is the best we can do. Had the opportunity to tour the facility and check out the operation, definitely an education. He also mentioned there’s more Blue Mountain coffee sold in New York City alone than grown in all of Jamaica – you figure it out.  Also learned there’s more to the Fair Trade story than one might think.

Check out the principle’s of fair trade here.  Hard to imagine something so altruistic could be bad.

There’s some question as to who really benefits from the Fair Trade movement. Our roaster swears there’s better programs providing help to coffee farmers.

Trying to learn more. Came across this in an article on BBC.com

“…not everyone is convinced that fair trade is a good idea.

Some critics claim that by focusing on achieving a fair price for poor farmers, the movement doesn’t address issues of mechanisation and industrialisation – radical changes that might allow farmers in the developing world to stop doing back-breaking work and break out of the poverty cycle.

So how fair is fair trade? Is it about getting Third World farmers to accept their lot, or, at best, a little bit more than their lot?

Eileen Maybin, a spokeswoman for the Fairtrade Foundation, says it does help to improve farmers’ lives.

“Fairtrade focuses on ensuring that farmers in developing countries receive an agreed and stable price for the crops they grow, as well as an additional Fairtrade premium to invest in social projects or business development programmes.

“Typically, farmers’ groups decide to use the premium on education, healthcare and clean water supplies, or the repair of roads and bridges, and to strengthen their businesses, improve the quality of their crop or convert to organic production.”

Ms Maybin says that those farmers involved in fair trading are happy with the results.

“The farmers and workers involved in Fairtrade always talk about how much they, their families and their communities benefit.”

Yet others argue that fair trade can end up being a trap for farmers, tying them into a relationship of dependence with charity-minded shoppers in the West.

Madsen Pirie, of the right-leaning think-tank the Adam Smith Institute, says that in protecting the market for certain producers, the movement effectively makes farmers “prisoners to our market”.

“They become dependent on us continuing to pay premium prices for their goods.”

Many tens of thousands of people escaped poverty last year, most of them in India and China, but he says that was done through real market developments rather than small-scale fair trade deals. They were lifted out of poverty because they could sell their products on the open global market, rather than being sectioned off in the fair trade market.”

Here’s the link to the article

BBC’s How Fair is Fair Trade?

And others I’ve found on the subject:

Economic Approach to Evaluating Fair Trade

Fair-Trade Coffee Article on Accountability Central

Does the Fairness of Fair Trade Matter?

Organic Consumers Association’s Take