Grounds for Complaint: Fair Trade and the Coffee Crisis

This report argues that Fair trade is not the solution to the fall in coffee prices worldwide. As over-supply of coffee is the cause of low prices, the paper argues that Fairtrade may encourage less efficient producers to keep growing coffee and therefore maintain over-supply. The paper suggests that a better solution would be for: 1) farmers to diversify into other products 2) industrialized countries to open their markets to developing country goods 3) industrialized countries to cease selling subsidized crops in competition with developing countries on world markets (copied from eldis)