Ethical Issues of Fair Trade Coffee: A Case Study
Part One: The ethical issue of Fair Trade coffee
We all know that coffee is something essential in our daily and maybe we all used to have one of them when it is needed, but only a few of us know the trading process of coffee and how does it travel from the coffee tree to our paper cup. The article is mainly about the unfair trading in the coffee trading process and provided a idea called Fair Trade coffee, but even the Fair trade have some ethical issues.
Because there is too many stages in coffee trading and big companies like Procter & Gamble, Kraft food and Nestle etc. purchased so many coffees that they have the edge and power to almost control coffee purchased price from famers. Because of the two reasons, it has been a long time period that coffee farmers can just earn a very meager profit from selling their coffee to those giant corporations, which caused the ethical issue that those giant companies make a lot of profit on coffee products but the planters--who provide the basic materials--not able to share the benefit from products made of their coffees.
Many organizations started a campaign called Fair Trade coffee, which means companies or coffee store straightly buy coffee from the farmers and pay more to them to ensure they can have a reasonable profit and companies or stores will charge a little more to customers on the final product because the rise of cost. It seems to be a good way to solve the unfairness in coffee beans trading but some companies charged the extra money but didn't return the money to farmers, which make the problem to become a ethical problem related to honest and conscience. Also, Fair Trade may cause damage to other farmers who didn't involved in the process and some people say it didn't follow the spirit of free market.
Part Two: The responsibility of Fair Trade participant to customers and farmers
As we now know the general idea of Fair Trade and where there is an ethical issue, we can easily to understand in the whole
We all know that coffee is something essential in our daily and maybe we all used to have one of them when it is needed, but only a few of us know the trading process of coffee and how does it travel from the coffee tree to our paper cup. The article is mainly about the unfair trading in the coffee trading process and provided a idea called Fair Trade coffee, but even the Fair trade have some ethical issues.
Because there is too many stages in coffee trading and big companies like Procter & Gamble, Kraft food and Nestle etc. purchased so many coffees that they have the edge and power to almost control coffee purchased price from famers. Because of the two reasons, it has been a long time period that coffee farmers can just earn a very meager profit from selling their coffee to those giant corporations, which caused the ethical issue that those giant companies make a lot of profit on coffee products but the planters--who provide the basic materials--not able to share the benefit from products made of their coffees.
Many organizations started a campaign called Fair Trade coffee, which means companies or coffee store straightly buy coffee from the farmers and pay more to them to ensure they can have a reasonable profit and companies or stores will charge a little more to customers on the final product because the rise of cost. It seems to be a good way to solve the unfairness in coffee beans trading but some companies charged the extra money but didn't return the money to farmers, which make the problem to become a ethical problem related to honest and conscience. Also, Fair Trade may cause damage to other farmers who didn't involved in the process and some people say it didn't follow the spirit of free market.
Part Two: The responsibility of Fair Trade participant to customers and farmers
As we now know the general idea of Fair Trade and where there is an ethical issue, we can easily to understand in the whole