Fairtrade Helps The Rich
Fair Trade is profitable for traders in rich countries. It is also aimed at richer farmers: in order to join Fairtrade, cooperatives must meet quality and political standards which means their farmers must be relatively skilful, educated and well capitalized, and critics point out that these farmers are, therefore, far from the poorest farmers. The majority of Fairtrade suppliers are in the higher income or middle income Third World countries, such as Costa Rica and Mexico, with relatively few in the poorest countries. Mexico has 70 times the GNP per head of Sierra Leone, and very much larger coffee farms. The minimum wage of agricultural workers in Peru is $3 a day and the average income of Fairtrade farmers in Bolivia was US$900/year, very much higher than normal agricultural incomes in Africa and much of Asia. Again, critics say this is diverting money from the poorest farmers.
Read more about this topic: Fair Trade Debate
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