Freakonomics recently posted an article titled
“Fair Trade and the Food Movement” that questioned the practicality of Fair Trade coffee. Specifically, the article noted that Fair Trade importers dump excess Fair Trade coffee on the conventional market when demand lags.
Curious as usual, we here at Zepol wanted to know more. So, we did a quick search for the United States’ importing trend for “Fair Trade Coffee” over the last seven years. South and Central American countries make up the bulk of the United States’ Fair Trade coffee imports. Below is a trend of the yearly trade from the top South and Central American exporting countries to the United States since 2003.
As you can see, Fair Trade coffee exports from the top five Central and South American countries to the U.S. have been steadily increasing as a whole since 2003. We might expect to see regular coffee exports from these same countries decreasing over this time frame since Fair Trade exports experienced so much growth. However, this is not the case.
A look at non-Fair Trade coffee exports from these countries fails to show that regular coffee exports decrease as Fair Trade coffee exports rise. Instead, the data shows relatively stable demand for coffee from 2003 - 2010. Could it be that the regular coffee market is merely sustaining its current demand while all coffee export growth occurs in the Fair Trade sector? What do you think?
