Reason Magazine has published one of the more — well, reasonable — articles about Fair Trade I’ve read in quite some time.
It’s a lengthy piece and it covers a lot of angles, so it’s tough to grab a representative paragraph that doesn’t suggest the entire article has a single point of view… it doesn’t. But I was particularly struck by this observation:
In other words: “There are starving farmers in coffee growing lands… Buy more coffee.” Wow… that one hits close to home.
Recommended reading.
If you’re thirsty for more, you might check out the transmogrification of the GreenLAGirl site, which has in a few short months grown from a blog detailing Siel’s efforts to call out Starbucks on that company’s Fair Trade policies, to something of a Fair Trade activist’s how-to manual. In particular, see her multi-part Certification Challenges series. Good stuff.
Thanks Doug. Would be interested in hearing what YOU have to say on the certification issues…
Thanks for the link to the greenlagirl site. I will have to bookmark that one too.