Fair trade isn’t fair.
Sales of Fairtrade-certified products from Uganda and Ethiopia are not benefiting poor farmworkers as profits fail to trickle down to much of the workforce, says a groundbreaking study.
Groundbreaking? I knew this years ago. There were arguments being made against it at least a decade ago – the case being that the only fair trade is open trade without embargoes and import tariffs. The very same people were arguing against aid for much the same reasons.
Still, Fair Trade gave the self-righteous a warm inner glow even if it wasn’t achieving anything in the real world. me? I have always avoided over-priced “Fair Trade” products.
Christopher Cramer, an economics professor at the University of London and one of the report’s authors, said: “Wages in other comparable areas and among comparable employers producing the same crops but where there was no Fairtrade certification were usually higher and working conditions better. In our research sites, Fairtrade has not been an effective mechanism for improving the lives of wage workers, the poorest rural people.”
You’d need a heart of stone, you really would.
Small farmers are the worst hit by fair trade schemes. They can’t afford the fees, so as demand for fair trade food rises among Guardian readers, their profits decline and they have to sell up – moving, as often as not, to the nearest shanty town.
No doubt Guardian readers have spotted a few such ex-farmers in the shanty towns they visit on their third world guilt trips, and have filmed them on their expensive phones – blaming non-existent torikutz for their poverty.