I have spent much of my life working to get higher prices for third world farmers, and I support trade justice. So why am I so anti the Fairtrade brand?
Take coffee for instance. In the 1980s there was an International Coffee Agreement that kept world prices high and stable by restricting production and controlling stocks. Then, in 1988, I did a job for the UN in Vietnam, which had produced virtually no coffee before the war. I discovered that they had a very secret coffee industry plan and were paying farmers well above the world price. The plan was so secret that they did not know what they had achieved. They were surprised and delighted to hear that they would be the second biggest producer in the world when the trees they had already planted came into full bearing over the next six years. They were shocked to hear that there was an ICA and that they would not be able to sell their coffee because they were not members.
In fact the ICA collapsed immediately the news of the Vietnam coffee planting leaked out: it would no longer be possible to control supplies or stocks. So Vietnam was able to sell its crop, and over the next few years the world wholesale price halved, falling by more than 50c per lb. And because coffee trees last 25 years, the effects are still being felt today.
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