>Of course, the key thing is that the farmers get a fair price. //
As a consumer of fairly traded goods this is the main benefit to me; that my purchases aren't forcing other people in to abject poverty, uneducation and poor health.
FWIW in the UK nearly all major supermarkets have own-brand Fairtrade marked coffee (for example) and there are Fairtrade coffees at a wide range of prices.
Yes bastard capitalists try to leverage people wanting to do right by their fellow man for profit but when fair trade becomes pervasive they are no more able to do this than with regular coffees now. That is when requiring that workers are fairly paid for their labour and protected from dangerous working conditions is considered part of the product (as it is for goods made in Europe say), as much as a packet is, then it becomes harder for middlemen to leverage this moral position to increase shelf prices.
As a consumer of fairly traded goods this is the main benefit to me; that my purchases aren't forcing other people in to abject poverty, uneducation and poor health.
FWIW in the UK nearly all major supermarkets have own-brand Fairtrade marked coffee (for example) and there are Fairtrade coffees at a wide range of prices.
Yes bastard capitalists try to leverage people wanting to do right by their fellow man for profit but when fair trade becomes pervasive they are no more able to do this than with regular coffees now. That is when requiring that workers are fairly paid for their labour and protected from dangerous working conditions is considered part of the product (as it is for goods made in Europe say), as much as a packet is, then it becomes harder for middlemen to leverage this moral position to increase shelf prices.