What is Fair Trade?

Question

What is Fair Trade?

Answer 1

Most of the stuff we buy comes from poorer countries, whether it's foodstuffs or clothes etc.  People in those countries have to work in order to supply these goods ... so there are farmers or there are people making clothes in factories etc.  However, we buy a lot of things at a very cheap price and nearly all of that goes to the company that is selling them, rather than the people who worked to provide the company with them.  Fair trade is when the workers in the supplying countries are given a fairer amount of money from the profts... having said this though, it's still not actually fair.  But it's better than non-fairly-traded products.

http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/

Answer 2

Fair trade is where the buyer pays more for goods to assuage the guilt he has for having others do work for him.

Answer 3

Fair trade means a better price goes to the suplier which are usually the very poor who get screwed by the global corporations.

Truth is though, you may pay more, but not all of the extra moeny goes directly to the supplier.  Its better but not perfect.

Although, I only buy fair trade coffee/bananas/chocolate/tea etc when I can.

Answer 4

The selling of products from a third world country for so called

charity shops to make a  huge profit.Tax charity shops and religion.

Answer 5

The ethos behind it is to make sure that the people at the bottom of the production tree (small scale farmers and cottage manufacturers, for example) don't get ripped off by multi-national companies. On the one hand (in theory) it assures people of a fair wage and prevents monopolising from larger companies. Whether this always works in practice is open to debate, but the idea itself is a good one. It does, of course, mean that the consumer pays slightly more, but we're rich westerners, so we can afford a few extra pence/cents/florins more.

Answer 6

Its expensive...and in this day and age thats NOT a good thing!!!!!!!!!!!  Not really helping their cause by charging well over the odds!!!