The #Fairtrade Façade « (ou l’arnaque du #chocolat équitable)
►http://fairreporters.net/2012/12/18/comment-the-fairtrade-facade
cocoa growers participating in Fairtrade programs in Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and Côte d’Ivoire see little of the additional money paid by Western consumers for Fairtrade certified chocolate. They are left in the dark about world market prices by the Fairtrade cooperatives meant to inform them of such things. For many, the membership fees they must pay to participate outpace the premiums they can earn.
In #Côte_d’Ivoire and #Ghana, Fairtrade has become linked with the “cocoa mafia” and the historically corrupt state Cocoa Board, respectively. When FAIR team member Selay Kouassi first attemped to report that story, he was threatened and eventually forced to go into hiding. All this suggests that Fairtrade is not just ineffective; rather, it has been subjected to and complicated by the realities of the post-colonial African economy, namely elite dominance and the inability of the state to fully establish a legitimate monopoly on violence.
But the report’s most damning finding is that, of everyone involved with the Fairtrade program, Fairtrade itself walks away with most of the money. In the Netherlands, for example, for each chocolate bar sold for $2.50, Fairtrade earns about six cents of the fair trade premium. West African cocoa farmers, on the other hand, earn only 2.5 cents.
►http://fairreporters.net/2012/11/14/the-fairtrade-rip-off
►http://fairreporters.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/the-fairtrade-chocolate-ripoff-investigation-20122.pd