Fair trade
Is Fairtrade the way to address poverty in the Global South?
Alec van Gelder argues the pros and cons of Fairtrade as an instrument of poverty alleviation
Is the world going to run out of food?
IPN Environment Project Director, Caroline Boin, will debate the "countdown to starvation."
Medicines for the poor: not the Oxfam way
IPN Opinion article
The registration of new medicines fell sharply in the last year in the USA, while Oxfam calls for a compulsory pricing structure and backs the compulsory licenses sought by Thailand and threatened by Brazil and Indonesia. There are indeed other problems facing pharmaceutical companies but the campaign against patents is a major one: when Big Pharma gives up investing in innovation, where will new medicines come from? The price of punishing Big Pharma is to punish the poor harder.
Starbucks, Ethiopia and Oxfam
IPN Opinion article
Oxfam is wrong to criticise Starbuck's in a coffee trademark dispute involving the Ethiopian government. Coffee growers need the rule of law, not the rule of Oxfam, explains Alec van Gelder.
Costa Rican consumer group lambastes proponents of ‘fair trade’ – says ‘free trade is fair trade’
IPN Press release
Letter to the editor: \'Squeezed to the last drop\'
IPN Opinion article
Unpublished Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post, regarding coffee markets and agriculture 29 November, 2002
\'Fair\' trade is about empowerment
IPN Opinion article
Sir, In your editorial \"Bitter coffee\" (September 19) you suggest that Oxfam\'s pressure on companies will help poor coffee farmers. However, Oxfam\'s definition of \"fair\" trade is to impose quality standards set by the International Coffee Organisation which, by increasing costs for multinationals, will help small coffee producers but disadvantage poor farmers, consumers and companies alike.
Oxfam is full of beans
IPN Opinion article
To round out the stereotype, Oxfam\'s campaign is calling for governments to spend up to $100 million to destroy \"surplus\" coffee and prop up prices, and wants the International Coffee Organization to force multinationals to abide by \"fair trade\" coffee standards. Yep, Oxfam wants taxpayers to cough up in order to pay more to drink coffee...
Far from the intended consequences, government intervention and \"fair trade\" standards would only worsen the problem for coffee farmers, however. Though it is trendy to blame multinationals for every ill, the real problems that poor farmers face are caused by a lack of infrastructure, distorted EU and U.S. agricultural markets and unheeded economic signals. [For WSJ subscribers http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1033601496319159033.djm,00.html]
