Small farmers in developing nations have little market power. Fair Trade can be a private sector mechanism for increasing the power of these farmers to allow them to better shape their world in ways that suits them.
I liked it. In fact, I'm going to try to get into it.
I think that, if really done well, Fair Trade local companies selling to international Fair Trade buyers could become the way economic growth could really connect with the rural African poor. If supporting a Fair Trade system that suitably gets rural farmers into the flow of international exporting could be the policy goal of Canada's foreign affairs/international relations (instead of haphazard projects littered across the African landscape) some change could really start to happen.
I'm looking to apply to a Canadian grant, the Gordon Global Fellowship, to learn more about the relevant policy challenges and try to connect the micro-level small farmers of Malawi with the macro-level flow of international trade.
Of course, this whole started grew out of a single well-written article--probably time to do more digging.
