Bruce Wydicks Arguments Against Fair Trade

Attracted by the idea of Fair Trade being able to create a stable, higher coffee price, many coffee growers are mistaken to stay in business even though they might not be successful in the field. “Fair Trade directs itself to organizations and regions where there is a degree of marginality,” explains Eliecer Urena Prado, dean of School of Agricultural Economics at University of Costa, in an Stanford Social Innovation Review article, “we are talking about unfavorable climates (for coffee production)...Regions that are not competitive.” Many places in Latin America and Africa do not have the appropriate climate and conditions to grow coffee, but by offering a higher price, many coffee farmers remain in a non profitable field when they could have

With only five percent of the sale price actually going back to the farmers, the majority of the profit stays in US (Chambers). It is not logical that farmers would join Free Trade when they only get paid five percent. As Phillip Oppenheim, a british writer wrote, “any intelligent person will ask why I should pay 80p more for my bananas when only 5p will end up with the producer” (Chambers). It also does not make sense for consumers to support Fair Trade when only such a small portion goes back to the producer. In Bruce Wydicks’ Huffingtong Post article “10 reasons Fairtrade Coffee doesn't work, he stated an experiment ran by his graduate students in San Francisco discovered the median coffee drinkers is willing to pay 50 cents more for a cup of fair trade coffee. After researching, they concluded that even in the best-case scenario, when world price for coffee beans are in their lowest, the maximum profit fair-trade growers receive is only one third of a cent. Fair Trade does not benefit coffee bean farmers as they only receive a small amount of profit for their hard work while a big portion of profit goes to the workers of the organization who did not really contribute to the production of coffee