Fair Trade not really fair

Andrew Faiz responds: I am embarrassed by the error; my ankles are bloodied from kicking myself. And as long as I have been exposed let me come clean with two other items: Paul McCartney rented the church for his wife Linda's memorial service; and, though it was mentioned at the convocation that Dietrich Bonhoeffer preached at Riverside, it is unlikely that he did. He was a student across the street at Union Theological Seminary in the early 1930s and would not have had the status to stand in the pulpit. He returned to New York City in 1939 and worshiped one Sunday at Riverside. In his diaries he wrote of that experience, “The whole thing was a respectable, self-indulgent, self-satisfi ed religious celebration.” Probably caught a bad day — which is my excuse for my egregious oversight.
Economist magazine in December, 2006, made the case that “paying a guaranteed Fair Trade premium — in effect a subsidy — both prevents” crop diversifi cation and “by raising the average price paid for coffee, encourages more producers to enter the market.” So, it is both bad farming practice and bad economics.
In my church our leaders buy fair trade coffee at above average market prices and the congregation sips this coffee blithely, probably without giving it any thought. The Economist makes it abundantly clear that supporting Fair Trade coffee is not in the interest of the (small) growers.