Center for Fair & Alternative Trade

Small Farmer & Household Impacts

This project examines the critical role of Fair Trade in the survival of small-scale producers and identifies the key financial and non-financial benefits derived from participation in Fair Trade for farmers, families, communities, and cooperative groups. We analyze the central challenges facing Fair Trade as a vehicle for producer empowerment. Our research reveals that the effectiveness of community-level organizations and the strength of their ties to the Fair Trade network are critical to the long-term poverty alleviating potential of the initiative. Secondary-level regional cooperatives play a crucial role in transmitting necessary capacities to community-level organizations and facilitating their insertion into the broader Fair Trade network.

Our work in this area focuses on the impact of Fair and Alternative Trade engagement on producers across a range of commodity areas and regions, including coffee in Latin America, rooibos tea in South Africa, and small-scale banana production in the Caribbean. Future research will examine the characteristics and impacts of alternative Fair Trade democratic organizations, such as all women cooperatives.

CFAT Personnel: Douglas Murray, Laura Raynolds, Maureen DeCoursey, Jennifer Keahey & Nicholas Greenfield.

Funding: Ford Foundation, United States Agency for International Development, & Cafédirect.

Products:

• Raynolds, Laura T. & Nefratiri Weeks “Fairtrade Certification in Latin America: Challenges and Prospects for Fostering Development.” Pp. 374-386 in J. Cupples et al. (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Latin American Development. NY: Routledge, 2018.
• Weeks, Nefratiri “The Fairtrade Access Fund: Does Linking Ethical Investment with Fairtrade Certification Enhance Credit Outcomes for Small Farmers?” MA Thesis, Department of Sociology, Colorado State University, 2017.
• Keahey, Jennifer “Fair Trade and Racial Equity in Africa.” Pp. 441-456 in L. Raynolds & E. Bennett (eds.) Handbook of Research on Fair Trade.  Northampton MA: Edward Elgar, 2015.
• Raynolds, Laura T. and Jennifer Keahey. “Fair Trade: Social Justice and Production Alternatives.” In M. Parker, G. Cheney, V. Fournier, and C. Land (eds.) In Routledge Companion to Alternative Organization. New York, NY: Routledge. 2014.
• Raynolds, Laura T. “The Impacts of Cafédirect’s Business Model: A Comparative Analysis of Producer Partners in Peru and Mexico.” Consultancy Report prepared for Cafédirect, 2007.
• Taylor, Peter Leigh, Douglas L. Murray and Laura T. Raynolds. “Keeping Trade Fair: Governance Challenges in the Fair Trade Coffee Initiative.” Sustainable Development 13: 199-208, 2005.
• Raynolds, Laura T., Douglas Murray and Peter Leigh Taylor. “Fair Trade Coffee: Building Producer Capacity via Global Networks.” Journal of International Development 16: 1109-1121, 2004.
• Murray, Douglas, Laura T. Raynolds, and Peter Leigh Taylor. One Cup at a Time: Poverty Alleviation and Fair Trade in Latin America, 2003.
• Fair Trade Research Group’s Case Studies in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

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