The Pros And Cons Of Fairtrade Coffee

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

The “Coffee Wars – The Big Three: Starbucks, McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts” article focuses on the company analysis of the Starbucks brand and how its main competitors, McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts, has affected their brand and driven competition higher. Even though there are many companies trying to enter the specialty coffee market, these three companies own the majority of the market share. With Starbucks’ top quality and above average prices they hold a different market than the fast coffee/food market of Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks; yet the competitive moves Dunkin’ Donuts has made over the years in order to compete with Starbucks and surpass McDonald’s has driven competition up between all three companies. The competition has stiffened ever more in the past ten years due to the changing economy. This led to “the big three” to come up with different techniques to gain competitive advantage over the other. Although the competition between these companies is to gain most of the market share, consumers are still loyal to a certain brand; this makes it difficult to gain each other’s clientele. McDonald’s continues to appeal to customers who want value and speed, Dunkin’ Donuts focuses on the middle-class, while Starbucks a customer who desires a higher quality product along with being recognized for using the brand.

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

The documentary follows Tadesse Meskela, the man who represents the union for many of the Ethiopian farmers. Specifically, he represents the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-op Union, which includes 74 co-ops, 74,000 coffee farmers, in southern Ethiopia. Tadessa is looking for a fair trade, to help his coffee producers get better trading conditions and to promote better conditions, and most importantly to improve the overall life of the coffee farmers. Tedessa travels the world trying to cut out the middle man who ultimately drives up the prices of coffee. His goal is to try and sell to the buyers directly. The big corporations responsible for

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

The terms free and fair trade sometimes go hand-in-hand but there are distinct differences between the two. According to Wikipedia, free trade is a system of trade policy that allows traders to act and or transact without interference from the government. Free trade implies the trade of goods without taxes (tarrifs) or other trade barriers such as quotas, subsidies,

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).

Fair Trade Coffee Fair Trade promotes socially and environmentally sustainable techniques and long-term relationships between producers, traders and consumers The world coffee industry is in crisis. A flood of cheap, lower-quality coffee beans have pushed world market prices down to a 30-year low. Many now earn less for their crop than it cost them to grow. Many coffee farmers around the world receive market payments that are lower than the costs of production, forcing them into a cycle of poverty and debtWithout urgent action, 25 million coffee growers' face ruin.

Fair trade is an organized social movement and an international organization which is non-governmental and non-profit organization. It is market-based approach that helps the producers in the developing countries like the farmers and workers in the developing countries by providing the workers in developing countries with a fair wage on which they can feed, educate and medically provide for themselves and their children and it cuts out the middleman meaning more profit goes to the farmers. It supports the small producers in the developing countries, so they can improve their quality and plan for their future. Fairtrade is started in the United States where Ten Thousand Villages began to buy the needlework from a man in 1946.Then in the late 1940s, a man began to

Following Meskela’s journey, the film demonstrates the power held by multinational corporations (MNCs) in setting the price of coffee. He wants a solution, but what happens with commodity traders, the international coffee exchanges, and the World Trade Organization (WTO), he is faced with challenges in finding that. Meskela worked diligently to eliminate the players who tend to come in between the buyers and the sellers. Instead, he went directly to the buyers to ask for a fair price. The fair-trade movement embraced his cause as they work to bring supposedly fairly-traded commodities to grocery stores in America.

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