[jennyp]

I used to have good feelings about FairTrade coffee - who wouldn't? Putting more money into the farmers who are getting crushed whenever wholesale coffee prices plummet, adding some disintermediation into the supply chain - that's a Good Thing, as the article points out.

But the FairTrade model is to Sovietize the farms: Forced collectivation. EEEEEWWWWWW!!!!

[djpg]

I never trusted the "Fair Trade" description. Who determines what is fair?

[KarlInOhio]

The FLO defines a fair farm as a family farm that is a part of a large democratic cooperative. Farms cannot be “structurally dependent on hired labor,” which means that hiring even one laborer year-round makes a farm ineligible for certification. Even more controversial is the cooperative requirement. Rather than deal with individual farms, the FLO exclusively certifies large cooperatives composed of hundreds of small land-owning farmers, each with a single vote on how to best spend the Fair Trade profits.

Is the picture of Che with a coffee cup optional or required?

[Vicomte13]

Certainly there's nothing wrong with the concept of farm cooperatives. A farm co-op is essentially a form of voluntary communism for mutual benefit, when you drill right down to it. We ALL own the combine, because we ALL need it, but we only need it a little bit of the year, and the thing costs a damned fortune, and it makes no sense for each to buy his own.
Likewise, we have more clout in setting a price if we cooperate.
And we can get group insurance too, maybe.

Voluntary communism.

But what they're talking about there doesn't sound like a real co-op. It sounds like corporate financier do-gooders imposing rules from afar to prevent the small farmers from doing it the way THEY think is in their own interests, in order to meet some (no doubt East or West Coast USA) financier's idea of how it ought to be done.

And that ain't a co-op.

[ThanhPhero]

Want luxury coffee? Go over to your nearest Oriental grocery shop and get Cafe Du Monde or one of the specifically Vietnamese products. It is as acid free as the Ethiopian and Kenyan coffee and much more reasonable in price. If you brew it Vietnamese/French style, 4-5 times as strong as what you get a cup of at the convenience store and in a small cup (2-4 ounces) it is very fine stuff. Do that with Maxwell House and our tongue will curdle. And if you make it standard American strength it is still quite drinkable 4-5 hours old. Actully some of the major brands are getting better as they include the Vietnamese beans more in their mix. I get half a kilo for $5.