http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/05/26/3441555/santa-barbara-shooting-violence-women/
BY BRYCE COVERT
AND ADAM PECK MAY 26, 2014 AT 12:18 PM UPDATED: MAY 26, 2014 AT 12:29 PM
excellent response to the criticism of fair-trade coffee i posted earlier.
The halo effect of Fairtrade has lasted many years, despite periodic critics popping up wanting to complain either that it distorts markets or that it doesn’t distort them enough.
Development is a complex business and there is always a risk that Fairtrade is seen to overclaim what it can achieve as a way to tackle poverty. There is only so much you can pack into a label, or that you can unpack as a tool to address the deep inequalities of world trade. The research field on Fairtrade has grown over recent years, and played a helpful role in improving practice and standards from what its findings have been.
I remember sitting down with a colleague from Oxfam in 1991 in Brixton around the launch of the Fairtrade Mark and trying to write up standards for fair trade products. We were starting from scratch and it was extraordinarily amateur –…
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The Financial Times launched a strong critique of Thomas Piketty’s influential Capital in the Twenty-First Century but this is overall a nitpicking disingenuous apology for the 1% (no surprise):
From http://www.systemiccapital.com/fairtrade-coffee-fails-to-help-the-poor/
Research published by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at London University reveals that workers at Fairtrade certified farms are paid less and suffer inferior working conditions compared with those working for non-Fairtrade farms.
The criticism emerges after a four-year research project conducted by development economists at SOAS. Funded by Britain’s Department for International Development, the researchers investigated labour markets for export crops in Ethiopia and Uganda. The micro-study of life for the rural poor involved 1,000 days of field research and the data covered 1,700 respondents including focus groups and life histories.
The latter expose the often appalling conditions suffered by workers picking the coffee beans and carnations that end up on supermarket shelves in Europe, the U.S. and Canada. The report titled Fairtrade, Employment and Poverty Reduction in Ethiopia and Uganda is at times a grim chronicle of exposure to harmful pesticides, workers forced to pay bribes to secure employment as well as violence and sexual abuse.
The report’s conclusion will come as a shock to consumers in rich countries who pick brands carrying the Fairtrade logo, supposedly supporting the earnings of family farms and small-holders by paying of a “Fairtrade premium,” helping them compete in a world dominated by large plantations.
MORE…
Hear Darrick Hamilton, Associate Professor of Economics and Urban Policy at The New School (http://www.newschool.edu/) for Public Engagement (http://www.newschool.edu/nspe), speaking at the New School Minute, where faculty from every school present their timely and celebrated research in a series of rapid-fire 60-second lectures.
I went to grad-school at the University of North carolina at Chapel hill with Darrick!! :D
Punkonomics (@DearBalak) 