Why is Coffee the Only Thing Americans Buy 'Fair Trade'? (Foreign Policy)
Senior Fellow Kimberly Ann Elliott's policy report is quoted in a Foreign Policy article discussing why consumers are more willing to pay for higher priced coffee than other fair trade goods.
A new report by Center for Global Development Senior Fellow Kimberly Elliot gives a snapshot of the global market for fair trade goods. The fair trade market has expanded rapidly - at $7 billion, the value of fair trade goods sold worldwide in 2011 was six times larger than seven years before, though still a pittance in the context of the global commodities trade.
One interesting point made in the report is that, in the United States at least, when we talk about fair trade-certified goods, we're largely talking about coffee. And within that category, we're largely talking about Starbucks:
Elliot writes:
Coffee was the only product licensed to use the Fairtrade mark in the United States for the first three years after Transfair USA was launched in 1998. Tea and cocoa were introduced in 2001 and 2002, respectively, bananas in 2004, rice and sugar in 2005, and vanilla in 2006. But even with the introduction of several new products and the weight differential in favor of bananas, coffee continues to account for more than half of the US Fairtrade market even in volume terms.