"Free trade is the most effective poverty reduction strategy the world has ever seen." Economic growth empowers people not selective production consumed by the few that want to feel good about their coffees and chocolates. Agricultural communities throughout the developing world dream to join the modern world but are being held back in their development because Fairtrade has some romantic notion it is good for them and US.
only through economic development can you have equal trade, holding the third world back with
FAIR TRADE definition :
only through economic development can you have equal trade, holding the third world back with
FAIR TRADE definition :
- trade in which fair prices are paid to producers in developing countries.
- Now when we trace the producers for 1 cotton shirt....
- Does that mean that everyone needs to be paid fair prices or do they leave many out of the equation?
- farmers
- planters
- pickers
- sorters
- ginners
- drivers
- unloaders
- spinners
- dyers
- washers
- weavers
- pattern makers
- cutters
- tea servers
- seamsters
- finishers
- packers
- label adherers
- production assistants
I would say based on this preliminary list, the answer is no.
watch The BITTER TASTE and you decide:
and then the issue of monopoly comes into play, already-poor farmers actually have to pay to join up to the Fairtrade scheme. And in doing so, they also have to ensure that their business meets certain requirements, whether it is in their long-term interests or not.
The Fairtrade Foundation demands certain things of the producers if they are to be accepted on to the scheme. For example, producers have to employ what the Fairtrade Foundation deems to be ‘environmentally sound agricultural practices’ and, to qualify as small producers, they have to ‘rely mainly on their own or their family’s labour’. It’s almost cruelly ironic: while champions of Fairtrade claim it is freeing producers from the exploitative relations of the market, it simultaneously ties them into the oppressive and exploitative moral relations of ‘us’ and ‘them’. They have to stick to the letter of ‘our’ vision of the world, in all its sustainable, anti-growth glory. That is, in exchange for a marginally better deal on the market, producers have to adhere to what the Fairtrade Foundation deems to be the right way of farming or harvesting.
"At the start of the annual Fairtrade Fortnight, a highly critical report by the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) warns that it is little more than a marketing exercise intended to maintain fair trade's predominance in an increasingly competitive marketplace. It says fair trade is "unfair" because if offers only a very small number of farmers a higher, fixed priced for their goods. These higher prices come at the expense of the great majority of farmers, it says, who - unable to qualify for Fairtrade certification - are left even worse off....four-fifths of the produce sold by Fairtrade-certified farmers ends up in non-fair trade goods, and typically just 10% of the premium consumers pay for fair trade actually goes to the producer." (read the whole report here)
It doesn’t take a psychologist to notice that there is something more than a bit narcissistic about ethical, Fairtrade-conscious shopping. It really is all about ‘us’. Yes, there may be a lot of accompanying PR guff about how our consumer choices over here are making their lives better over there, in Africa for instance. But as it is conceived here, the world of production, whether one is thinking of the harvesting of sugar beet or the farming of cocoa, functions as little more than a mirror in which we are encouraged to see ourselves – see ourselves, that is, as good, as morally virtuous. This is not feelgood shopping. This is feel-good-about-yourself shopping.
But in reality, is there much to feel good about? Is the me, me, me nature of ethical shopping blinding us to the reality of Fairtrade?
