Africa’s Unfair, Fair Trade: Who Is Protecting the Public?

Unreported mergers and acquisitions, false advertising, or aggressive marketing tactics all place the farmer, the common trader, at odds with the market.  A farmer in rural Tanzania incurs high costs of production particularly on the agro inputs used to grow, store and transport a given product. When this product gets to the market, it is put to competition with similar products produced by large corporate syndicates that can afford mass production at marginal cost.  What it all means in simple terms, is the rural farmer’s prices are higher than the syndicated prices and so the farmer cannot sell and is forced to lower prices to meet the competition. In the long run, suffering high costs of production and minimal returns, the farmer is forced into a perpetual cycle of poverty.   This is simply not fair. A consumer unwittingly buys a box of milk under the assumption it is pure cow milk containing a definite amount of nutrients. Unknowingly the photo of the cow on the box does not necessarily mean the milk is from a cow and even if it is, what percentage of the content is actually milk? You are forced to buy a product at a price