Comments on: Cooperatives and the Fair Trade Wine Paradox

By: Nate

Nate — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:31:23 +0000

Can’t Fair Trade collectives be arranged to provide price per acre/ha of grapes harvested, rather than by the ton? Then grapegrowers would not get penalized for cropping at a level that would lead to higher quality wines. True, the collectives would make less wine, but it would be significantly better…

By: steve kirchner

steve kirchner — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:12:15 +0000

Is Fair Trade in the long-term interest of growers or workers? Commodity grapes are so easy to grow – you’ve written alot about wine lakes. When South American cooperatives can’t get the prices they want they can roll stones out in the streets and block traffic. But they won’t get french welfare state benefits so things won’t get any better for them. I think that things will get better as more people conclude that viticulture in SA is a good investment. As a marketing tool Fair Trade might help the SA wine industry. But I don’t see how Fair Trade organizations can drive quality because members will always have an incentive to cheat. The guys who actually make money growing grapes in France don’t do it with Fair Trade.

By: Patrick Dodd

Patrick Dodd — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:58:33 +0000

Enjoyed the post, thank you.

I think the thing to remember is that in order for Fairtrade to be sustainable, Fairtrade products will eventually have to compete on quality. Since the introduction of Fairtrade products, we have seen a massive improvement in quality such that many Fairtrade goods have reached parity in terms of quality with non Fairtrade goods – this is especially true with coffee. I am hopeful that Fairtrade producers understand the need to compete on quality and that Fairtrade will continue to be a sustainable trading practise.