The local barista told me fair trade coffee is actually worse for some farmers

I was grabbing a latte downtown last Wednesday and the guy behind the counter said fair trade certification fees eat up so much profit that small farmers barely break even. He showed me a chart from some study that claimed direct trade deals pay 20% more on average to growers. I always thought fair trade was the gold standard, but now I am not sure. Is fair trade just a marketing label that hurts the very people it claims to help, or am I falling for a bad study?

2 comments

2 Comments

burns.fiona1d ago

My uncle actually manages a small coffee co-op in Guatemala, and he says fair trade has been a lifeline for them, not a trap. The certification fees are around $0.30 per pound, but they're getting a guaranteed minimum price that's usually way above the commodity market. I mean, those direct trade deals your barista mentioned sound nice, but they're usually only for the biggest, most famous farms that can negotiate on their own. Small farmers don't have that kind of leverage or marketing power. The study might be true for some places, but it's not the whole story, idk. It feels like people are always looking for a reason to tear down a system that's actually helped a lot of families get by.

benk261d ago

Is it really that serious though? I mean $0.30 a pound adds up fast when you're moving serious weight. @burns.fiona your uncle's co-op might be one of the good ones, but these markets are basically designed by the same big companies that set the commodity price anyway. It's like a different flavor of the same deal to me. The studies keep showing farmers don't actually see that much more money in their pockets after all the fees and bureaucracy. Not saying it's a total scam, but people act like it's some revolution when it's really just a tiny bandaid on a broken system.