The spread of information and communication technology (ICT) is one of the most impressive ways market economies can help people can escape poverty on their own. As a practical example, farmers in poorer countries are now able to ascertain market prices for their goods quickly through mobile phones. This real time information empowers farmers to negotiate better prices with traders who have historically forced them to sell their produce at arbitrarily low prices - instead of market rates.
One of the key platforms of the Trade Justice campaign - aside from advocating more aid, which has already proven to be ineffective, and the cancellation of debts, which had no real market value anyway - is that trade should be "fair". Smaller farmers should receive better prices, we are told, as supermarkets in Western countries stock "fair trade" products like sugar, coffee, and cocoa.
For farmers in these poor countries, fair trade means something completely different, though. A personal friend who has visited "fair trade" farmers in Tanzania tells me that rather than getting marginally higher prices for their crops, these farmers receive almost none of the funds that are earmarked for them in wealthy countries. Instead, these go to locals who are responsible for distribution, who then pocket the extra cash for themselves. This corruption is made possible by wealthy "fair trading" companies who, too often, do not hold their local distributors to the kind of accountability that would force these powerful vested interest to firm agreements. (It turns out that enforcing a contract can be is just as difficult for Oxfam as it is for other multinationals like Ford.)
In other words, fair trade introduces more useless middlemen who get richer at the expense of the farmers for whom the system is ostensibly designed to support.
Encouragingly, much of this is changing due to the introduction of competition among ICT providers, offering competitive rates for, among other things, mobile telephony. Mobile phones empowering local farmers with the chance to get up to date information about the going market rates for their produce, and thus helps them to negotiate better deals with local traders. Crucially, it also helps them avoid the fair trade trap.
A classic example, really, of how free trade is the only real kind of fair trade, despite how much propaganda which states to the contrary.
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