The Economics of Fair Trade
Ever since I heard about fair trade upon my arrival to Wolfville, it had just made sense: farmers don’t deserve the treatment they get from the middlemen, especially in the coffee industry; Fair Trade is a solution. However last year, when I was campaigning against a Tim Horton’s franchise in the Student Union Building, I ran across a report from the Adam Smith Institute (a free-market think tank) describing how fair trade distorts markets and makes little difference in the welfare of farmers. Since I had little time on my hands (this was during exams), I asked Satya Ramen of the Just Us Development and Education Soceity (JUDES) if she had prepared any response before, and since she hadn’t, she worked hard to produce a very well written piece detailing the principles of fair trade in response to the Adam Smith Institute report. I found that by reading both the Adam Smith report and Satya’s response I gained a deeper understanding of the large scale mechanics behind the Fair Trade initiative. So here are some resources for the fair trade debate:
- “Unfair Trade” by Mark Sidwell of the Adam Smith Institute
- “The Bitter Aftertaste” by WorldWRITE
- Response to “Unfair Trade”, by Satya Ramen of JUDES
- The Fairtrade Research Institute Publications Index
- “A Response to the Adam Smith Report & A New Way to Think About Measuring the Content of the Fair Trade Cup” by Alastair Smith of BRASS
- Fairtrade Labelling Organization (FLO) Standards