Content area
Full text
(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae and/or non-US-ASCII text omitted; see image)
Articles
I.
Introduction
Fairtrade is an organized social movement that promotes social, economic, and environmental standards in areas related to the production and trading of "Fairtrade" labeled goods. The Fairtrade label was launched in 19881by the Dutch development agency Solidaridad, which started to sell Fairtrade coffee from Mexico and Nicaragua under the Max Havelaar Fair Trade label. The aim was to help economically disadvantaged and marginalized producers and workers in developing countries get fair access to markets under better trading conditions across the entire supply chain, inter alia through the establishment of long-term trading relationships.
The initiative was replicated in the United States, Canada, and several countries throughout Europe and Asia, where coffee, tea, cocoa products, bananas, and so forth were sold in "World Shops" or "Alternative Trading Associations" (ATOs) being represented by the Fair Trade Federation (FTF) and the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO). To unite these different labeling initiatives and to establish worldwide standards and certification, Fairtrade Labeling Organizations (FLO) International was established in Bonn, Germany, in 1997. It launched a new international Fairtrade Certification Mark in 2002 to enhance the visibility of Fairtrade. In 2004, the FLO split into FLO International, with responsibility for setting and maintaining Fairtrade Standards (agreed upon through a process of research and consultations) as well as for offering business support to producers, and into FLO-CERT (2012), with responsibility for inspections and certification of producer organizations.
The standards set by FLO International serve as minimum criteria to ensure that conditions for production and trade are socially, economically, and environmentally responsible. The means to achieve these goals include i) a price floor; ii) Fairtrade premiums; iii) stability and access to credit; iv) establishment of working-condition standard;2v) encouragement of institutional structures, such as cooperatives; and vi) establishment of environmental standards (Dragusanu, Giovannucci, and Nunn, 2014).
It is not a priori clear that the ambitious Fairtrade goals have been achieved. Based on randomized controlled trials, Granville and Telford (2013) analyze the impact of Fairtrade on landless workers in the South African wine industry. Although they find that Fairtrade workers are not more likely to report higher incomes or better health and education outcomes than non-Fairtrade workers,...