A Brief History

Trade is what drives almost every aspect of our lives.  So much relies on trade, from the local to the global scale.  We trade food, energy, crafts, knowledge, entertainment, transportation.  If it has value, it is traded.  Everyone has their place in the trade network.  As consumers it’s our job to buy the goods produced, but there is so much more behind the scenes that we don’t take into appreciation.  As a result we have let injustices go by unnoticed.  The biggest injustice in trade is the mistreatment of the people who produce much of the goods we purchase.  Companies exploit these people, making them work ungodly hours in the harshest conditions for next to nothing.  Companies like these take people’s land from them, destroying the environments that they live in and rely on, all while we sit back in ignorance.  These acts and the public’s unawareness are what brought the Fair Trade movement into fruition.

The Fair Trade movement can trace its origins back to the 1960s with the start of the Fair Trade Organization in Oxfam, UK and Fair Trade Original in the Netherlands.  Soon after similar programs began to appear across Europe and the Fair Trade movement was under way.  The movement then crossed into other continents and soon after gained international recognition through the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD).  This is where the phrase “Trade not Aid” was coined (www.wfto.com).  The phrase was made to inspire countries and industries to not just send these underprivileged workers aid, but to actually treat them as equals in the trade chain.

Fair Trade covers all different types of goods from lumber to handicrafts.  One of the largest goods that can be found under the Fair Trade umbrella is coffee and, as a result, has been the center of much debate concerning the Fair Trade movement. Coffee is the world’s second largest commodity.  In such a large business it’s not uncommon that corporations look for as many loopholes as possible to make the process of getting you your coffee fast and efficient.  What many people don’t know is that doing this created major problems in the coffee industry.  According to a September, 2007 article by David A. Taylor (Certified Coffee: Does the Premium Pay Off?) in the scholarly journal, Environmental Health Perspectives,the price of coffee beans plummeted in the late 1990s.  "Prices sank from around US$1.50 per pound to about a third that amount in 2001."  The major drop in price, mainly a result of cheap and underhanded business practices, and other factors are what spurred the rise of the Fair Trade coffee movement.