Peru, Fair Trade Coffee and the Minimum Wage

September 22nd, 2006 • Uncategorized
Tags: coffee-farmers, fairtrade, FT, minimum-wage, peru

I doubt that anyone thinks that the Fairtrade accreditation system is perfect. A hugely complex beast, it has to work with a variety of farmers, cultures, products and people across massive distances with little money to spend on checking up or enforcement. From the coffee farmers to the co-operatives to the roasters to the cafes, the system is supposed to be able to guarantee consumers that the product their buying was produced under ethical conditions with a fair amount been paid to the farmers and labourers. Consumers trust the label as their guarantee, and that’s a trust that’s not easily given but can be easily lost. So it can be very disheartening to read of reports of some Fairtrade farmers paying below minimum wages to their employees. The Financial Times investigated five farms in Peru and found that four of the five were paying 10 soles a day, whereas the minimum wage is 11 soles a day. It’s not a huge difference but in propaganda value alone this can be quite a powerful piece of information in the wrong hands.

Read more »

Popularity: 2% [?]