Unfair Trade

Book excerpt: "Everybody would agree that fair trade is a good thing. Farmers and suppliers in the developing world should be rewarded for their hard work. Profits should be equitably shared. If only it were that simple. Conor Woodman's explosive new book shows how fair trade has become big business in itself. And, in the process, many of the principles of fair trade have become distorted. Companies sign up to fair trade schemes that yield few practical benefits in order to gain competitive advantage. Money that could go to suppliers gets wasted on bureaucracy. Schemes that would genuinely help get ditched in favour of ones that just look good on paper. To explore the practical effects of all this, Conor Woodman travels the world to witness things at first hand. He visits lobster fishermen in Nicaragua who are dying in their hundreds to keep the restaurant tables of the US well stocked. He visits farmers in the Congo who are failing to benefit from supposedly ethical trading initiatives. And he ventures into war-torn Afghanistan to show what extremes paying lip service to fair trade can lead to."