The concept of Fairtrade has been here for than four decades now and the consumers are well aware of the objectives and benefits that Fairtrade claims to bring about. Undeniably, the concept of Fairtrade derives from the urge to ensure that the producers are receiving their share of fair price. However, in practise, it is questionable whether the initiatives of fair-trade achieved the fairness of this concept.
Many consumers are satisfied by purchasing products marked and certified by fair trade, since it ensures them that a fair price has been paid to the producers. For example, a cup of coffee printed with the fair-trade mark at Starbucks. Any coffee-drinker would assume his or her contribution to the economic development of the coffee producer back in Africa. This is affirmed by the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation which shows an increase of employment rate in Eastern Africa.
However, with such economic progress, one may question the ‘true’ effect of fair-trade considering the fact that poverty and unemployment still exists substantially. As Dr. Alastair Smith implies that the producers and workers are being encouraged by fair-trade to live in poverty for the rest of their lives and are being stopped from growing beneficially. The ‘real prices’ of goods which are certified by FLO have been falling continuously whereas the ‘real prices’ of goods which are manufactured are rising. As suggested by Dr. Smith, it seems that the producers in third-world countries will remain poor while the manufacturers in wealthy countries will get richer at the poor’s back. This fact can be seen represented in the publication of Madeleine Ace, where Oxfam, another fair-trade organisation, accused Starbucks for actively blocking Ethiopia’s trademark bid for the reason that the company sold a pound on coffee beans up to $26 ( £13.40) while growers selling to Starbucks earned between 75 cents and $1.60 a pound.
With such facts in view can a coffee-drinker still think that he is contributing to the economic development of under developed countries? On the other hand, the concept of fair-trade focuses on gradual development and it is for this fact that such countries will need time until they are titled to be a rich industrially developed country.
