Fair Trade Coffee Workers being paid less than minimum wage.

There are more cracks appearing within the administration of the fair trade coffee system.

This article, originally published in the Financial Times, unearths cases of fair trade money not going where it should, workers being paid less than they should, and coffee being sold as fair trade when it’s not.

Here is just a short excerpt from that article:

"Ethical" coffee is being produced in Peru, the world's top exporter of Fairtrade coffee, by labourers paid less than the legal minimum wage. Industry insiders have also told the FT of non-certified coffee being marked and exported as Fairtrade, and of certified coffee being illegally planted in protected rainforest.

This casts doubt on the certification process used by Fairtrade and similar marks that require producers to pay the minimum wage.

It also raises questions about the assurances certifiers give consumers about how premium-priced fair trade coffee is produced.

As I have mentioned before in this blog, these kinds of problems threaten public trust in fair trade and have the potential to bring the entire movement to its knees.

I’m not saying the administration of the fair trade system is not enormously complicated, especially when dealing with so many small growers in so many parts of the world. It is clearly a huge challenge to administer and police such a widespread movement.

That said, fair trade is enormously important to the world. Its impact on coffee farmers, the growth of social consciousness in the west…and its position as an alternative to free trade…make fair trade profoundly important to our future.

With the stakes being so high, I think we would do better to slow the growth of the movement, and make absolutely sure that it is administered and policed effectively. There is absolutely no benefit to pushing for faster expansion, if the foundations of the movement itself are shaky.

Without public trust in fair trade, we have nothing.