Summary Of Marco Coscione's Book In Defense Of Small Producers

In these few chapters of Marco Coscione’s book “ In Defense of Small Producers: The Story of CLAC”, the writer looks at the issues surrounding the fair trade. Unfortunately, an idea that was meant to give producers an advantageous position in the market has now become something that they feel they need to defend themselves from. I feel the reasons for this involve issues of representation, costs, and unequal competition. It is unfortunate that something which started off with nothing but good intentions has led to problems for those that it was supposed to be benefit, but it is also something that could be expected because of the complexities that come with having so many parts working together and overlapping with each other. The initiative

It was founded by activists and idealists but it has been made up now of professionals and advisers (61). This meant that they were more concerned with maintaining the organization. They forced producers to spend a lot of money to pay fees and expenses to the organizations in order to keep the certifications (Coscione, 62). They benefitted from having their coffee identified as fair trade, but at the same time, for small producers that were just making small profits, the fees and expense were hard to take. The fees have the effect that the creators of the network were trying to avoid; they gave the advantageous position to those who could afford the fees and let them grow even bigger, while the smaller producers were being left out. However, even for the larger plantations, they were now burdened with costs and responsibility. Furthermore, they had to deal with companies coming in and being certified quickly, many of which were large multinationals and their subsidiaries (Coscione, 76). This process defeats the purpose of the organization being formed, which was meant to empower those that did not have the ability to compete with the bigger forces in the