The Coffee Crisis: Is Fair Trade the Solution? ; Case Study #10-8 of the Program: ''Food Policy For Developing Countries: The Role Of Government In The Global Food System''
CUL Initiatives in Publishing (CIP), 2007
Online
report
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13 pp. ; ©Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. All rights reserved. This case study may be reproduced for educational purposes without express permission but must include acknowledgment to Cornell University. No commercial use is permitted without permission. ; Coffee is an important crop widely grown in the developing world. The economies of some countries, particularly those in Central America and parts of Africa, are highly dependent on coffee as a source of both national income and export earnings. About 25 million people, most of whom are small-scale farmers, rely on coffee for a living. Smallholder coffee farmers once reaped abundant benefits from their crop. Cash from coffee sales financed schools, hospitals, infrastructure, and training for farmers. Coffee-producing regions were also associated with higher income levels, higher literacy rates, higher nutritional levels, and less political instability. But all these benefits have evaporated since the late 1990s, when the world coffee price slumped to unprecedented low levels. The collapse of coffee prices has led to a humanitarian crisis with devastating effects on coffee growers, communities, and countries. In the absence of government intervention in the sector, a number of innovative approaches, most notably the Fair Trade movement, have been proposed to revive farmers' incomes from coffee production. The Fair Trade movement seeks to challenge historically unequal international market relations, transforming North–South trade into an avenue of producer empowerment and poverty alleviation. Recently the Fair Trade movement has been characterized by national labeling initiatives coordinated under the Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO). The FLO certification is designed to help coffee growers gain direct access to international markets at guaranteed premium prices. Fair Trade has had some success, but it also raises a number of issues. First, there is substantial concern about how much growers can actually benefit from this scheme. ...
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The Coffee Crisis: Is Fair Trade the Solution? ; Case Study #10-8 of the Program: ''Food Policy For Developing Countries: The Role Of Government In The Global Food System''
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Autor/in / Beteiligte Person: | Cheng, Fuzhi |
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Veröffentlichung: | CUL Initiatives in Publishing (CIP), 2007 |
Medientyp: | report |
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