The Efficiency of Fair Trade Coffee

The Fair Trade (FT) movement has created great expectations in the development community that trade could be made more equitable for poor rural producers. It also proved to be hugely popular with coffee drinkers around the world. While consumers have been offered an array of different “ethical” labels (organic, bird-friendly, etc.), FT coffee remains unique in that it primarily aims at improving the price that producers receive through the existing market chains, not at altering the process through which a commodity is produced that would define a new commodity that bundles a good and a social or environmental service (Berndt, 20007).