{"id":2033,"date":"2011-05-17T09:00:59","date_gmt":"2011-05-17T13:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/?p=2033"},"modified":"2011-05-17T09:07:19","modified_gmt":"2011-05-17T13:07:19","slug":"does-fair-trade-labeling-keep-coffee-producers-in-poverty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/2033","title":{"rendered":"Does Fair Trade Labeling Keep Coffee Producers in Poverty?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lawrence Solomon believes so. From a recent op-ed<\/a> of his in the National Post<\/em>:<\/p>\n

“Saturday, on World Fair Trade Day, we have something else to feel guilty about. That fair-trade cup of coffee we\u00a0savor\u00a0may not only fail to ease the lot of poor farmers, it may actually help to impoverish them, according to a study out recently from Germany\u2019s University of Hohenheim.<\/p>\n

The study, which followed hundreds of Nicaraguan coffee farmers over a decade, concluded that farmers producing for the fair-trade market ‘are more often found below the absolute poverty line than conventional producers (…)’<\/p>\n

These findings do not surprise me. I speak as someone who has had contact with various Third World producers in my capacity as president of\u00a0Green Beanery,\u00a0a company I founded seven years ago to raise funds for\u00a0Energy Probe Research Foundation (…).”<\/p>\n

Solomon’s op-ed is interesting throughout.\u00a0As for the study<\/a> he cites, I have not yet had time to read it in its entirety, but it was published in a reputable scientific journal. As far as I can tell, the results cannot be argued to be causal, but the authors have taken great care to supplement their quantitative analysis with qualitative data from extensive interviews.<\/p>\n

For technically minded readers, the bottom line of the study is that while organic and organic-fair trade coffee farmers receive a higher price at the farm gate, their exploitations are less profitable. Since farm profits — and not prices — are what matters in determining welfare, it appears that organic and organic-fair trade labeling is not what it’s cracked up to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lawrence Solomon believes so. From a recent op-ed of his in the National Post:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,55,26,14,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","category-economics","category-food","category-micro","category-policy","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gPg8-wN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2033"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2516,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033\/revisions\/2516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}