Fairtrade and fair trade - aren’t they the same?

The Fairtrade mark is aimed to guarantee the consumers that the product they are buying have been sourced from producers getting a fair deal and meeting the Fairtrade standards. Products bearing this label have been certified. Their standards are there to ensure there is a minimum price agreed with producers, includes a premium paid so that it can be invested to enhance the producers and labourers standards of life, and that production and trade are socially, economically and environmentally sound.

Fair trading, in itself is a developmental effort. It is the concept where in producers would be able to recoup their expenses and have a good standard of living from selling their crops. It means, buyers - big or small, did not squeeze the manufacturers out of having a good life to inflate their own profits.

still sounds the same?

In a sentence, not all fairly traded goods are labelled with the Fairtrade mark. And if the critics can have their say, your coffee with the Fairtrade mark, is not made with 100% fairly traded coffee beans.

i thought it’s a good thing to buy Fairtrade products?

And we believe it is. Don’t get us wrong here. What we want is people should decide for themselves. Just because it sounds good and people tell you it’s good doesn’t mean you should take it as a bible truth.

Fairtrade aims to alleviate poverty and is a tool for struggling farmers in third world countries. By setting a minimum price for goods in the world market, it virtually guarantees that farmers would be justly compensated. The other side of the coin is that it is because of that minimum price guarantee, other producers would be encouraged to produce more. By laws of supply and demand, this would drive the price even further down for produce not bought in fairtrade markets.

It is also an impossible task to make sure that not one worker is paid below the minimum wage, even on producers for the Fairtrade mark. Though, I don’t think anyone doubts that the farmers benefitting, have had seen their lives uplifted.

We believe that the ideals behind Fairtrade are good. But all it offers is an interim solution to a much bigger problem involving world policies and issues with globalisation and how the world market adapts. And even though the Fairtrade mark has gained a big following here in the UK, we hope that it is the ideals and not the brand that people remember more.

more reading before you make your own stand...

Read more on Fairtrade and their critics in the Adam Smith Institute as well as Fairtrade’s response to this.

More articles from the FT and the BBC.