Next time you sip a latte, look beyond the feel-good choice

Coffee is my thing. If I can't have my daily coffee by about 10am I am just stroppy and the day doesn't seem to go well. I've never been big into this whole Fair Trade coffee thing, and today's Age had an interesting opinion piece about it, which basically says its an idealistic marketina campaign that doesn't work:

Go here to see the whole thing

Fair trade may be hindering not helping growers in developing countries.

JUST how fair is fair trade? Mass market retailers from Safeway to Starbucks now sell us coffee that is supposed to quench our thirst and appease our conscience, but there is more to fair trade than feel-good marketing and social justice.

Individual farms are unable to achieve certification by themselves — the fair trade organisation will only approve co-operatives that can contain hundreds of farms. This practice reduces entrepreneurship and competition between producers, eliminating the benefits of innovative farming techniques. And in some regions, the fair trade system encourages farmers to grow in less climatically favourable areas, depressing the quality of the coffee beans.

Nevertheless, the fair trade marketing machine is extraordinarily powerful, and the brand has revealed an eager base of socially aware consumers.

The fair trade system is more than our preferences in the supermarket. At best, fair trade has an ambiguous effect on the economic wellbeing of coffee growers in the developing world; at worst, it may actually be holding them back.