well i liked your post up until you mentioned capitalism. I am for fair trade as i've said earlier, but it irritates me when people confuse capitalism with exploitation. Its a shame that worthwhile causes like making trade fair are over-shadowed by the ignorant anti-capitalism movement that gains the majority of the press coverage.

It doesnt matter how many McDonalds windows they smash on May 1st - capitalism will prevail because the vast majority of people want it to. Because they know it works

Exploitation, on the other hand, will also prevail because public attention is focused on the anti-capitalists rather than on the real issues that should be addressed.

I havent done much reading into the specific companies mentioned like Nestle - maybe you could give us the low down on them?

I always think its better to target the deeper causes than individual companies. A concerted effort by the WTO and governments would achieve more than the actions of individual companies

Many coffee farmers are now ripping up their failing crop to sow more lucrative, but illegal, produce - coca, marijuana, poppy and chat. Oxfam has been looking at the story.

Small-holder coffee farmers with few alternatives are increasingly turning to coca, marijuana, poppy and the stimulant grown in Africa, chat, rather than persevere with their failing coffee crops. For Peruvian farmer Pedro Páramo, the argument is simple: "We have to survive. If we don't find realistic substitutions to this coffee crisis and get at least the same level of income we had four years ago, then we will have to find other alternatives - be they legal or not."

Any chance that the world's trading nations could have agreed of better ways to encourage coffee farmers to diversify into other legal crops were dashed last month, following the WTO's failure in Cancún to agree on agricultural negotiations. Oxfam has recently heard in high-level industry meetings the 'coffee to coca' issue being voiced with concern.

During the International Coffee Organisation (ICO) meeting this month in Cartagena, Colombia, the Angolan Ministry of Agriculture's Josefa Correia Sacko - who is Secretary General of the Inter-African Coffee Organization (IACO), representing 25 African nations - confirmed a growing problem in Africa. More and more Ethiopian coffee farmers now growing chat, a mild stimulant illegal in the US, and last week in Colombia, the Global Alliance on Coffee and Commodities (GLACC) heard that growers in Peru and Colombia were increasingly replacing coffee with coca and poppy.

"Poppies are sprouting in many areas where our farmers grow coffee," Fernando Boza, who works with speciality farmers in Peru for Seattle's Best Coffee Company, told the Panos news agency. "It is a disturbing trend but can be explained by market reality."

Coffee growers are not suddenly international 'narco-traffickers'. In reality, the giant transnational companies that control the global coffee market have failed to solve its worst crisis in the last 100 years. The price of coffee is now hovering around its lowest point in 30 years, not even covering the cost of poor farmers' production.

"The coffee price is getting worse and worse, I used to buy coffee at 14 birr a kilo and sell it at 20. Now I am buying it for under 10 birr a kilo and I sell it for 12. This is not enough to cover the costs of my expenses and transport to Dire Dawa. The big merchants have undermined the coffee market and if this continues I will stop buying coffee altogether and just buy and sell chat" says Ethiopian coffee farmer Djibro.

In Peru, the Junta Nacional del Café has proposed a $30m fund to help guarantee coffee as a sustainable crop, to stop farmers moving into coca. However, coffee remains at around 50 cents per pound,while coca is around $3 a pound and a litre of opium latex up to $1000. Without more political will to compensate for unsustainable low prices and solutions for the crisis, Oxfam fears that many more coffee farmers will begin growing raw materials for the narcotics industry.

ok

would it help if i drank the world's stocks of lager? that seems like fair trade to me

;D

Three Words come to mind

COPY AND PASTE

You really have nothing to say do you! To be honest i dont know shit about any of this but at least i know that. Rather than thinking MAKE TRADE FAIR is cool but not knowing why!

what do you want me to say..??