Fair Trade

Recently people have become more and more conscious of what they put into their bodies and where it comes from. An unprecedented amount of information is now readily available to most Americans with the advent of the Internet. This has resulted in a great increase in transparency of the many aspects of imported products. Consequently, programs have been established to help ensure that these products are produced in more ethical and humane ways. To many Americans, the Fair Trade labeled bags of coffee they purchase that give them the energy they need to go about their day in addition to being a socially conscious decision but to many it is a means for survival and an escape from a cycle of debt that traps many similar non-Fair Trade growers generation after generation

Fair trade is a market reactive system that wants to abolish global inhumane acts from child labor, poor working environments, low wages, and healthy working conditions. Fair Trade does not control the prices at a local level the producers

Threat of Substitutes: There are various substitutes for fair trade coffee in the industry such as regular coffee, tea etc but not only coffees but in the general beverages market e.g. Coca Cola, Water etc. As a result of this there is a very high threat of substitutes.

Fair-trade is a trading partnership that focuses on sustainable development for poorer producers. they do this by providing better trading conditions and raising awareness of their situation.

Trading fairly is a movement which strives for fair treatment for farmers. In a fair trade agreement, farmers will

In conclusion, the topic of free trade is difficult to debate and often controversial as it has advantages but also disadvantages. Nonetheless, the drawbacks outweigh the benefits as it one, contravenes basic moral ideologies, two, makes the rich, richer, and the poor, poorer, and three, jeopardizes our declining environment. All in all, free trade will neither support nor sustain our country to be ethical, prosperous or

Being an entirely fair trade company means Just Us pays its suppliers from so-called “third world” countries a fair price, including a premium for social welfare, gets into long-term contracts (equal or more then a harvest cycle) with them skipping middlemen who often absorb most of the margin and offers them additional benefits e.g. pre-payment and loans. “The

Fair Trade is a certification from Fair Trade USA, a non-profit based out of Oakland California, that certifies that the product you are buying has been made with the utmost social and environmental responsibility. I.E. that the manufacturer was not abusing their workers or harming the environment when they make their product. To quote the paper: “As the leading third-party certifier of fair trade products in North America, FT USA’s certification stamp or seal of approval was also more than just a label; it ensured adherence to a rigorous set of standards so that ‘purchases are socially and environmentally responsible.’” As well as: “FT USA’s Fair Trade Certified label was distinctly focused on empowering ‘farmers and workers to fight poverty through trade, and to protect the environment.’”

While the idea of the fairtrade movement is arguably not bad at all, the metaphor always leaves me with a somewhat bad feeling. Keeping the movement in mind, I want to focus on the phrasing for now. The metaphor is making use of the assumption that trade means to have an equal and therefore fair exchange between two parties. Since fairness is an intrinsic value most of us share and want to see in the world, it is very easy to agree with the metaphor, which is why the metaphor has a mostly positive connotation. However, the metaphor is, in fact not just phrasing, but linked to a real movement. Putting the agreeable connotation aside, I think we should more often question whether fairtrade really is a fair trade at all.

Fair Trade’s consumer recognition has tripled in the last five years, proving the company’s sustainability in a global market. As of today, this organization works with more than 800 companies to verify more than 6,000 products as Fair Trade. In 2009, Fair Trade Certified products generated $1.2 billion in retail sales, indicating their large-scale business practices.

2009). This in itself shows the high standards of sustainability can be made from free trade (Gidney, M. 2009). Fair trade provides two key benefits that can help with the current world economic crisis. First it provides sustained benefits for producers that can help maintain their business through fluctuations of the world market (Gidney, M. 2009). Second, fair trade helps to maintain fair prices, additional social premium, and long-term partnerships that help provide better living standards for millions of people in over 60 countries (Gidney, M. 2009).

The film shows the WTO convocation where ministers of trade for countries like Ethiopia share their struggles of being outright ignored and left out of negotiations and they decline the agreements that were forced upon them. At this point in the film, there is a move to look broadly at the WTO, where it goes back to showing Ethiopia’s poor coffee farmers who have to turn to farming chat instead of coffee. Chat is a narcotic plant that people can chew and it is ten times more profitable than coffee. Since it sells for a higher price, farmers have turned to cultivating this instead. The final statistic of the film is that if Africa’s share of world trade increased by only one percentage point, it would generate $70 billion a year, five times what the continent receives in aid.

From the graph, cocoa farmers are severely underpaid. Under the fairtrade agreement, farmers can now receive a fair price for their cocoa. Whittaker’s has two fairtrade agreements for their dark chocolate, allowing them to paint an ethical picture of their company. This would attract consumers who are concerned about the origins of their food. (Lindsay

The fair trade concept, based on the idea of both economic activity and social development, is replete with ethical and sustainable echoes. Ransom (2002 p 20) asks, 'can the

Nonetheless, the real prices of certain commodities such as lamb, tobacco and beef have increased over time due to increasing world average income, which encourages world demand. Interestingly, developing countries, which form the predominant exporters of primary commodities, earn lower relative prices over time, for instance, palm oil arrives primarily from Indonesia and Malaysia and raw sugar arrives mostly from Brazil and Thailand. Contrariwise, the world suppliers of lamb are the United Kingdom, Spain and Australia and, moreover, 14% of world bovine meat arrives from the United States (Simoes, 2013). Therefore, it can be argued that greater advantages are granted to suppliers in developed countries than those in developing countries by trade liberalisation.