The Fair Trade Coffee Market: Income Differences for Small-Scale Farmers and Industry Growth

Thesis advisor: Richard McGowanThe Fair Trade movement is not new. Its roots go all the way back to the 1940s, and since its inception many Fair Trade organizations have arisen to offer this alternative strategy for doing business. Coffee is most commonly associated with Fair Trade, and it is the product this paper seeks to explore. In a broad sense, this investigation will look at how close Fair Trade Coffee certification programs actually come to being fair. The working definition of fairness is the ability to provide economic opportunities to marginalized workers. A fair economy would properly reward hard-working farmers for their intense labors. Many Fair Trade initiatives argue this is not what exists. As a result, they pay a living wage and offer opportunities to coffee farmers—some of the poorest people in the world—with hopes that this will help advance them out of poverty. To see if this successfully promotes fairness in economics, this paper will focus on the benefits of certification to small-scale farmers, mainly regarding income, and on the development of the Fair Trade Coffee market. Ultimately, this research will demonstrate that this movement is at least somewhat successful at improving the economic situation of marginalized workers.Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2011.Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Economics Honors Program.Discipline: Economics