BUYING ‘Fairtrade’ coffee is not really helping the very poor, new research suggests. By comparing living standards in Fairtrade-certified producing areas in Ethiopia and Uganda with similar non-Fairtrade regions, four development economists from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London found that Fair Trade agricultural workers often earned lower incomes. After four years of fieldwork in the coffee, tea and flower sectors in Ethiopia and Uganda, where they gathered 1,700 survey responses and conducted more than 100 interviews, the SOAS researchers found people living in ordinary rural communities enjoyed a higher standard of living than seasonal and casual agricultural workers who received an apparently subsidised wage for producing Fairtrade exports. Women’s wages were especially low among producers selling into Fairtrade markets, according to the researchers.

Comparing areas where the same crops were produced by similar, though not Fairtrade-certified employers, they found that workers received higher wages and benefited from better conditions. This was not because the Fairtrade cooperatives were based in areas with higher or particular disadvantages. The rationale of Fairtrade is that producers of commodities subject to price volatility should be protected through payment of a minimum price to cover living and production costs, a price which adjusts whenever the market shifts above the minimum threshold. In addition to this, traders should pay workers a "social premium" of around 5-10% for development and technical assistance.

The SOAS research suggests that Fairtrade has failed to make a positive difference. Within the areas studied, the poorest (typically wage workers in Fairtrade initiatives), often lacked access to schools, health clinics, improved sanitation and other social projects, even when they had worked on accredited processing stations or for compliant producers.

PS: The Fairtrade Foundation has published a lengthy reply: "We note the innovative methodology and large sample size that SOAS’s research project has used to answer its three research questions, only one of which focuses on Fairtrade. We also note however that the study has not sought to evaluate the impact of Fairtrade’s model and interventions as it has not followed an impact evaluation methodology."