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Under corporate control; economy of hunger; other stories (Saturday, Feb. 19, 2005 -- CropChoice news) -- 1. A few corporations control most of Americans' food choices 1. A few corporations control most of Americans' food choices By Mary Hendrickson, Ph.D. Food and Society Policy Fellow, University of
Missouri at Columbia Monsanto's acquisition of Seminis raises important issues about the
potential uses of biotechnology in the vegetable seed market. It also raises
a fundamental question about the small number of companies dominating the
seed industry and shaping the foundation of our food system. Today, Monsanto and DuPont control 60 percent of the U.S. corn and soybean
seed market. They join three other companies, Syngenta, Dow and Bayer, as
the world's leading suppliers of seed and chemicals for commercial crops
worldwide. Monsanto's leading technology in genetically engineering Round-up Ready
soybeans has affected American farmers significantly. Nearly 85 percent of
America's soybean crop is planted with Round-up Ready technology, touted
both as increasing farmers' profits while reducing herbicide use. In reality, Round-up Ready beans have reduced farmer decision-making, while
allowing farmers to manage larger farms with integrated seed and chemical
packages. Increased productivity and more expansive operations have not
improved farmers' bottom line. Researchers at Iowa State University, as well as independent consultants
such as Charles Benbrook, have shown that Round-up Ready beans are no more
profitable for farmers than conventional soybeans because of increased seed
costs. Privatizing the breeding of crops through genetic engineering means
farmers buy seeds they traditionally would have produced on their own farms.
Farm level impacts translate into community impacts. Farms are bigger, fewer
people farm and fewer businesses serve those farms - significantly reshaping
agricultural-dependent communities across Missouri and Illinois. But it's not just farmers and rural people who are affected by changes in
the seed industry. Every American who eats can see the transformation of the
food system in local grocery stores. Less choice at the farm level
ultimately reduces choice in the supermarket aisle. Reducing competition in
the seed market will reduce the choices farmers have for planting and reduce
the availability of seeds adapted for local markets. With fewer companies
competing to develop and refine seeds for commercial vegetable and grain
crops, is it possible that genetic diversity could be dangerously reduced? Consolidation in the food and agricultural industry is nothing new, and the
seed business seems to be following the pattern. As farmers and consumers, we have stopped making decisions about what kind
of food we will produce and eat in this country. Corporate producers make
that decision for us. We let global food firms decide where our food comes
from, how much it will cost and how it will taste. When shaped by these corporate forces, our food decisions no longer rest
primarily on taste, quality, nutrition, security and culture. These
decisions are made based on how cheaply food can be produced and sold for
the most profit. Even without applying biotechnological inventions such as
Round-up Ready soybeans, cotton and canola, or Bt-resistant corn to the
vegetable seed market, consolidation and lack of competition have left many
farmers with higher seed and input costs. While Monsanto might offer new opportunities for vegetable farmers, it is
just as likely these farmers will find restructuring in their seed industry
means they face the same fate as American soybean and cotton farmers -
bigger farms, fewer farms and intense international competition. This acquisition may make financial sense on Wall Street, but consumers
should ask if it is sensible to give control over the genetic material of
our food to corporations that must focus solely on the bottom line.
2. The economy of hunger By Richard Manning One of the many ironies of our time is that no news is strictly local.
Corporate culture's homogenization leaves me free to tell a quirky
little story about my town and be fairly certain it is relevant in
yours, even if yours is Palencia, Guatemala. The poor, and therefore the hungry, have always been with us, so it
would seem there is no news in this matter. Nonetheless, a group of
well-meaning folks assembled itself recently in my town, Missoula,
Mont., with the straightforward mission of eradicating hunger here. One would think it to be an easy enough task. Missoula has a lively
economy, affluence and a deep-seated progressive streak immune to the
smear of red that has so stained the rest of the region. So in true
progressive tradition, we saw this as simply a matter of rolling up our
sleeves and getting on with it. After all, most of us have seen the hungry, the shuffling homeless under
the interstate bridges. There didn't seem to be all that many of them,
and they didn't look as if they would eat all that much. But the people who had been doing the actual work of collecting and
distributing food to the poor for years in this town were quick to
inform us that stereotypes are simply wrong. It has become increasingly difficult to work at small-town food banks
because often one knows the client not as a beggar from beneath the
bridge, but as a neighbor or colleague. Food banks today cater
increasingly -- and a sociologist's survey of our town bore this out --
to people who are employed, the class we now call the working poor. These people earn so little they barely get by. Catastrophic medical
bills or Missoula's escalating housing costs can chew up their
inadequate paychecks so that by the end of the month there is no money
left for food. If we are to really do anything about the shameful matter of hunger in
our town, we must address these larger issues. What at first looked like
a little hole to plug now appears to be a bottomless chasm, ever
widening. There is something fundamental buried in all of this: where these people
work. Many of them, report the food bank people, work full time for
minimum wage and no health insurance at the ring of chain stores that
has suburbanized this once unique mountain town. The big-box retail
business has exploded in Missoula, making us a regional market center,
part of the cause of our prosperity. That is, hunger is increasing in
our town not in spite of our healthy economy, but because of it. Hunger in America is no longer a matter of falling through the cracks,
of happenstance and misfortune. Hunger has been institutionalized as a
part of the economic fabric, including especially the business of
selling food. There is a mirror image that extends this story to the developing world.
The New York Times recently reported, "Across Latin America, supermarket
chains partly or wholly owned by global corporate goliaths like Ahold,
Wal-Mart and Carrefour have revolutionized food distribution in the
short span of a decade and have now begun to transform food growing
too." Simply, small subsistence farmers are unable to sell to the chain stores
because they cannot meet the stores' conditions. At the same time the
big companies are murdering the local markets that used to sell the
farmers' products. "The stark danger is that increasing numbers of them will go bust and
join streams of desperate migrants to America and the urban slums of
their own countries," the Times reported. Look for some of them, coming soon to a food bank near you. ### Richard Manning is the author of several books, most recently "Against
the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization." He wrote this
essay for the Land Institute's Prairie Writers Circle, Salina, Kan.
3. Agriculture Commodity Prices Continue Long-Term Decline: Trend Has Negative and Positive Impacts on Food Security in Poorest
Developing Countries Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of The United Nations, Tuesday February 15 WASHINGTON and ROME and GENEVA, Feb. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- The long-term
downward trend in agricultural commodity prices threatens the food
security of hundreds of millions of people in some of the world's
poorest developing countries where the sale of commodities is often the
only source of cash, says a new report released today by the UN Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO). According to The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets 2004 (SOCO
2004), many farmers and exporting countries still find themselves
trapped by their dependency -- producing and exporting more, but earning
less than they did in the past. SOCO 2004 also says that lower prices for basic foods enable many poor
food importing countries and their consumers, especially in urban areas,
to meet their food needs at lower cost and to gain access to nutritious
diets. Declines in agricultural commodity prices slow While the overall trend in commodity prices has been downward from the
late 1990s through 2001, the report shows that prices on world markets
have rebounded, or at least levelled off, over the past two years.
However, not all commodities have performed the same. There have been
rebounds in cereals, oil crops, dairy products, fibres and raw
materials, while horticultural product prices remained more sensitive to
market balance and meat prices were disrupted by animal disease
outbreaks. Price recovery has been far more fragile for tropical beverages, sugar
and bananas, according to the report, which points out that these are
some of the very commodities on which the poorest countries are most
dependent for their export earnings. Some developing countries manage to diversify Commenting on SOCO 2004, Hartwig de Haen, FAO Assistant
Director-General, Economic and Social Department, said: "The long-term
downward trend in commodity prices along with increased productivity and
production of major agricultural export commodities have divided
developing countries into two distinct groups. On the one hand, we have
the developing countries that have managed to become less dependent on
one or two agricultural commodities, some shifting production into high
value export crops. "On the other hand," Mr. de Haen added, "the Least Developed Countries,
or LDCs, where usually small producers account for the bulk of
agricultural production and exports, have been unable to mobilize the
investment and training required to shift to new crops. They also have
difficulties meeting the high quality standards and strict delivery
deadlines of the major supermarket chains in the developed countries." The dangers of depending on a few agricultural commodities Many developing countries rely on exports of a small number of
agricultural commodities, even a single commodity, for a large share of
their export revenues. This concentration leaves them exposed to
unfavourable market or climatic conditions. A drought or a drop in
prices on the international markets can quickly drain their foreign
exchange reserves, stifle their ability to pay for essential imports and
plunge them into debt, the report warns. As many as 43 developing countries depend on a single commodity for more
than 20 percent of their total revenues from merchandise exports. Most
of these countries are in sub-Saharan Africa or Latin America and the
Caribbean and depend on exports of sugar, coffee, cotton and bananas.
Most suffer from widespread poverty. Commodity dependence made worse by market distortions Because many of these countries depend on agricultural commodity exports
to finance food imports, a decline in the prices of exports relative to
the prices of imports can threaten food security. However, the report
acknowledges that the same downward pressure on commodity prices may
also reduce the food import bills of developing countries. The report warns that "these problems are exacerbated by market
distortions, arising from tariffs and subsidies in developed countries,
tariffs in developing countries and the market power in some commodity
supply chains of large transnational corporations." The report urges the elimination of market distortions, and warns that
high agricultural tariffs and producer subsidies in developed countries
limit market access and depress commodity prices. While markets for agricultural products in developing countries are the
fastest growing, the report warns that they are also generally heavily
protected. FAO's Agenda for Action to combat commodity oversupply SOCO 2004 lays out an agenda for action to combat the growing problems
caused by oversupply and market distortions. It urges World Trade
Organization negotiations to give priority to reducing agricultural
tariffs, producer support and export subsidies in developed countries.
It calls for the elimination of tariff escalation that penalizes exports
of processed goods from developing countries. At the same time, it urges
developing countries to reduce their tariffs in order to encourage trade
among themselves and to allow their consumers to benefit from lower
world prices. It also highlights the need for developing countries to
improve their capacity to take advantage of opportunities opened by
trade liberalization. The report calls for measures that would help LDCs improve their
capacity to take advantage of trading opportunities and to participate
more effectively in trade negotiations. It suggests compensating
low-income economies for any loss of trade preferences that result from
the on-going WTO trade negotiations. Increased investment to improve productivity of domestic food production
in developing countries is also recommended by the FAO report, along
with mobilizing resources to support generic promotion campaigns and
diversification into non-traditional agricultural exports and the export
of value added processed goods. Programmes to help farmers insure against shocks that could damage their
crops or undermine prices are among the report's recommendations.
Weather insurance, forward-pricing systems and market-based price
insurance are some of the schemes that have been proposed to deal with
the inherent volatility of agricultural markets.
4.Corporate friendly Bush budget George Naylor, President The proposed
Bush budget cuts for FY 2006 will hurt family farmers, but give little
relief to taxpayers while delivering low priced farm commodities to the
corporate livestock industry --- Tyson, Smithfield and Cargill. Because the 2002 farm bill doesn’t do what a farm bill is supposed to
do—support market prices and avoid wasteful overproduction --- farmers
have become dependent on government subsidy payments which are getting
the ax in this 2006 budget. As it is, most farmers are barely surviving
at current subsidy levels. The new budget proposals and the legislation that would accompany them
actually re-open the 2002 farm bill, and the authors of that bill ---
corporate agribusiness --- remain the winners at the expense of family
farmers and taxpayers. Secretary Johanns’ calculations show that
increased spending from FY 2004 to FY 2005 --- over $10 billion for
commodity program payments --- are a direct result of farm prices
dropping once again below marketing loan rates. If farm programs supported farm prices at levels that farmers received
in FY 2004 due to crop shortfalls, taxpayer savings would be at least
that $10 billion rather than the relatively small savings of $587
million attributed to the 2006 payment reforms. Secretary Johann’s projected 2006 savings of $5 billion is "in part due
to projected commodity price recovery" which no one can predict. The
opposite could also happen since there is no floor under farm prices and
crop expansion is common in many countries of the world. The proposal to limit government payments to $250,000 per year may
affect some large cotton and rice producers, but will have little effect
on who produces other commodities. If cotton and rice producers shift
production to corn, soybeans, or wheat, this will increase
overproduction of those crops and further depress the farm price. The 2006 budget provides no new funding for farm ownership loans in
effect barring a new generation of farmers. It also dismantles important
rural development programs, slashing their funding and moving the
programs to the Department of Commerce; which will add confusion to both
the program delivery and the mission of these programs. Free trade agreements --- especially the WTO --- are the source of
payment reforms that will most likely hurt farm income. The goal to
decouple payments by limiting marketing loan benefits to historical
production (on 85% of historical acreage) follows WTO edicts. The five
percent cut in direct payments and countercyclical payments may seem
small but in fact account for $3.6 billion of the projected savings.
These are real cuts on top of record low commodity prices. For U.S. farm and trade policy to address the low prices received by
farmers in developing nations, our farm bill would need to seek
international cooperation in setting price supports (actually raising
prices) and shared responsibility of the major exporting nations for
food security reserves and supply management. Instead, these budget reforms only exacerbate the failed current policy
that dooms farmers around the world to poverty because many of them
won’t get any government payments. The agribusiness giants will continue
to dump cheap commodities to replace local food systems with its
corporate manufactured food system. To get to the heart of the farm problem and budget deficits, the
National Family Farm Coalition proposes a new farm bill solution: the
Food from Family Farms Act (FFFA). FFFA establishes a price floor that
would force multinational grain traders and processors to pay farmers at
least the cost of production for their crops. Our policy proposal also includes grain reserves to increase food
security, and increased incentives for bioenergy crops and
environmentally sustainable production. Since these new budget proposals
re-open the 2002 farm bill, it’s high time we seize the opportunity and
strengthen our food and farm policy to support a family farm system
rather than expanding a corporate farm system at taxpayers’ expense.
5. Farm Coalition Endorses Payment Limitation Reform Legislation For ImmediateRelease February 15, 2005 The Sustainable Agriculture Coalition today endorsed commodity program
payment limitation reform legislation introduced by Senators Charles
Grassley and Byron Dorgan. The proposed legislation would place a limit of
$250,000 on the amount of commodity payments any one farm can receive on an
annual basis and close an array of existing loopholes in order to
distribute scarce federal dollars in a more equitable way and restore
integrity to the program. The bill introduced today is consistent with the payment limitation reform
proposal contained in last week's budget request from the President and
with the 2002 Farm Bill floor amendment that passed the Senate floor with a
two-thirds affirmative vote, and builds directly on recommendations of the
2003 USDA Payment Limitation Commission report and the 2004 U.S. General
Accounting Office report. "Passage of this initiative will level the playing field for family farmers
by limiting the ability of the largest producers to bid land away from
smaller and beginning operators and will raise farm income by reducing land
prices and rents and discouraging price-depressing production on every last
acre of land," according to Ferd Hoefner, a representative of the Coalition. The bill would establish effective caps of $40,000 on direct (fixed)
payments, $60,000 on counter cyclical payments, and $150,000 on loan
deficiency payments and marketing loan gains, including gains on generic
certificates and forfeited commodities. The combined limit would be
$250,000. In comparison, under current law the cap on direct payments and
counter cyclical payments is $80,000 and $130,000, respectively, and there
is no effective cap on loan deficiency payments and marketing loan gains,
and hence no effective total limitation. The bill would also direct USDA to promulgate regulations that count all
payments on production under the primary control of a single person toward
that person's limitations. This would prevent mega farms from avoiding the
limitations by constructing complex business relationships that allow them
to control production but put crop ownership and payments in the name of
other parties. These regulations would come into play only when payments
on the production controlled by a person exceed the effective limits
established by this Act. Finally, the bill would improve USDA's
enforcement ability by instituting firm penalties for fraud. "It is time to stop forcing the taxpaying public to pay for farm
consolidation and the loss of economic opportunities in farming," said
Hoefner. "The current lack of effective payment limits hurts family
farmers and the rural communities they help support, harms the environment,
and compounds our compliance problems with world trade rules." The Sustainable Agriculture Coalition represents grassroots farm, rural,
and conservation organizations from across the country that advocate for
public policies supporting the long term economic and environmental
sustainability of agriculture, natural resources and rural communities.
6. Anti-GMO ballot measures miss the mark By Deborah Rich We're working hard chasing down signatures out here in California, but in support of the wrong ballot measures. Instead of backing initiatives to ban genetically modified crops, we should be forcing a vote on whether to require all agriculture to be organic -- not only in balmy, crop-diverse California, but in every state. I agree that genetically modified crops likely jeopardize the intricate web that has evolved between plants, soil microorganisms and animals in ways little understood and difficult to anticipate before being made painfully apparent. Substituting human judgment for the sieve of evolution as the determinant of whether the DNA of different kingdoms of life should mix ought to give us pause. But genetically modified crops are merely symptoms of the underlying problem of industrialized agriculture and its reliance on chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Plants altered to produce their own insecticides, or to withstand herbicide applications, are crop chemicals in a new and more convenient form. Like their liquid, granule, dust and gas predecessors, genetically modified crops extend the illusion that we can indefinitely feed, clothe, house and transport our populous species with little regard for the basic tenet of biodiversity and the natural systems of nutrient and energy recycling upon which all life depends. Outlaw GM plants without a fundamental change in our approach to agriculture, and our laboratories will soon spew out different and equally disturbing innovations. We don't have the time, personally or environmentally, to fan out gathering signatures to counter the release of each new generation of agricultural chemical. We need, instead, to vote once for a system of food production that promotes the health of the land. We need state referendums requiring all agriculture to switch to organic within a reasonable time. By definition, this would outlaw GM crops, and nearly all other forms of synthetic chemicals. The past 10 years have made a mockery of the original rationales offered for radically altering the DNA of plants: Much of the world is still hungry, we're still bailing out our farmers with a national farm bill that will cost us well in excess of $100 billion, and pesticide use on the major GM crops is increasing, not decreasing. But during this same decade, we have reached a point of critical knowledge about how to grow our food organically. We could vote, today, to require all agriculture to be organic within 10 years and know that neither we, our children nor our poor will go hungry due to insufficient crop production. For 24 years the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania has conducted the Farming Systems Trial comparing organic farming side by side with chemical-based farming. Corn and soybeans are the staple crops of the trial, just as they are of the United States. The study has shown that organic yields consistently match conventional yields. Organic has fared well in other tests. Bill Liebhardt, director of the University of California's Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program from 1987 to 1998, reviewed studies at seven universities and found organic yields matched or almost matched conventional yields. Decidedly unbalmy North Dakota grows nearly as many certified organic acres as California -- 145,500 compared with nearly 150,000, respectively, in 2001. The National Organic Program, which has regulated use of the word "organic" on food labels since October 2002, provides a good starting point for identifying what practices would and would not be allowed under an organic mandate. A national network of organic certification agencies already exists and, with certified organic cropland in nearly every state, we have a contingent of experienced organic farmers at the ready. I'd like to think that a president would carry the torch to draft and pass legislation requiring U.S. agriculture to adopt organic practices: "All-American, All-Organic." But few presidents can dare be so bold given the lobbying strength of conventional agriculture and its chemical suppliers. Instead, the vote will have to begin with us, and gather strength state by state. ### Deborah Rich raises olive trees near Monterey, Calif., and has written about agriculture for the San Francisco Chronicle and other publications. She wrote this essay for the Land Institute's Prairie Writers Circle, Salina, Kan.
7. Agriculture Export Dumping Booms During WTO's First Decade: U.S. Farm Bills Increase Dumping Trend FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Ben Lilliston, U.S., 612-870-3416, blilliston@iatp.org Minneapolis - Ten years after the enactment of the World Trade
Organization (WTO)'s Agreement on Agriculture, U.S. food companies are
still exporting crops at prices below their cost of production (dumping)
onto world markets, found a new report released today by the Institute
for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP). IATP's report, WTO Agreement on Agriculture: A Decade of Dumping -
United States Dumping on Agricultural Markets, looks at export dumping
from U.S.- based food companies onto world agricultural markets. The
analysis, based on the most recent numbers available (2003), provides
dumping calculations from 1990-2003 for five commodities grown in the
U.S. and sold on the world market: wheat, corn, soybeans, rice and
cotton.
"It is clear that the WTO Agreement on Agriculture is doing nothing to
address agricultural dumping and its severe consequences for farmers
around the world," said IATP President Mark Ritchie. "The low global
prices caused by dumping hurt farmers around the world, including U.S.
farmers. It's time for trade negotiators to put this issue front and
center." Using data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), IATP found
that in 2003 agriculture exports from U.S. based global food companies
were sold well below the cost of production: Dumping is one of the most damaging of all current distortions in world trade. Yet, since its inception the WTO has refused to address or even acknowledge its negative impacts on rural economies around the world. Developing country agriculture, vital for food security, rural livelihoods, poverty reduction and generating foreign exchange, is crippled by the predatory competition from major commodities sold at well below cost of production prices in world markets. The report found that dumping levels increased significantly for every commodity after the passage of the 1996 Freedom to Farm bill. The 1996 bill, followed by the 2002 U.S. Farm Bill, produced a vast structural, price-depressing oversupply of major agricultural commodities. This oversupply has driven commodity prices down worldwide. Both the 1996 and 2002 Farm Bills were driven by efforts to make them compliant with WTO rules. The result has been the institutionalization of agricultural dumping by U.S. farm policy, the report concluded. Each of the five major export commodities saw a significant jump in export dumping when comparing the seven years (1990-1996) prior to the 1996 Farm bill to the subsequent seven years (1997-2003):
"Agriculture subsidies are not driving dumping," says Ritchie. "It is the absence of farm programs that bring production in line with supply. Without these programs, farmers will over-produce with or without subsidies, and dumping will continue." The full report, along with a Q and A on what the results mean, is available at: http://www.iatp.org . The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy works globally to promote resilient family farms, communities and ecosystems through research and education, science and technology, and advocacy.
8. Fair trade sweetens pot By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY, Feb. 10, 2005 Supporters of farmers in developing countries are urging consumers to buy fair-trade chocolate for their valentines to ensure that farmers who grow the cocoa beans are paid a fair price for their crop. Chocolate may be the stuff of reverie to the eater, but it can mean misery for the small farmers that grow it in equatorial countries in West Africa and Central and South America, says Haven Bourque, a spokeswoman for TransFair USA, the U.S.-based non-profit organization that certifies fair trade coffee, tea, chocolate and fruit. "If you're growing cocoa in Ghana and you're not part of a cooperative, you're probably illiterate," she says. "You don't have a truck, so you're dependent on the middleman to come to you. You don't have a scale, so you're dependent on his scale as well. And you certainly don't have a cell phone, so you don't know what the price of cocoa is today on the New York commodities exchange." Fair-trade products aim to eliminate the middlemen and let the farmers deal directly with buyers. The first fair-trade product was coffee in 1999. Today chocolate, tea and bananas are certified through Fairtrade Labeling Organization International, a consortium of fair-trade groups in the USA, Japan, Canada and 17 European nations. The fair-trade mark on a product ensures that:
To be certified, each producer is inspected every year, and products that use the fair-trade symbol are subject to audits to make sure they truly are using fair-trade ingredients. Lutheran World Relief has one of the largest fair-trade chocolate programs, selling through parishes and online. Fair-trade cocoa-growing co-ops in Ghana have "dug wells for clean drinking water and spent money on education. So not only are those farmers benefiting from the fair-trade system, but the whole community (benefits)," spokeswoman Brenda Meier says. Less than 1% of the $13 billion U.S. chocolate market is fair-trade certified, but it's a growing market. From 2003 to 2004, sales grew 78%, and TransFair USA expects to double the volume of cocoa products it certifies in 2005, says Christopher Himes, TransFair USA director of certification. Fair-trade chocolate generally costs about the same as high-end designer chocolate. A 3.5-ounce bar typically retails for $3.50 to $3.75. Worldwide, the fair-trade price for chocolate has been set at a minimum of $1,750 per metric ton of hulled cocoa beans. The global export market average price ranged from $1,463 to $1,800 over the past few months, says Ann Prendergast, a cocoa analyst with REFCO, a financial services group. But what cocoa goes for on the New York Board of Trade isn't what's paid at the farm gate. In Ghana and the Ivory Coast, two of the world's major cocoa producers, farmers typically get about $160 per metric ton of cocoa, says Judy Ganes, a cocoa analyst with J. Ganes Consulting. But instead of selling to middlemen, fair-trade farmers in those countries sell through cooperatives and typically are paid $225 to $300 per ton in addition to benefiting from the social programs provided through their co-ops. "The difference is that the farmers are getting the fairest deal out of the export price possible," says Charlotte Opal of TransFair USA. "In the traditional supply chain, the middlemen and the exporters keep most of the profits, and the farmers are left with very little." The World Cocoa Foundation, with support from the chocolate industry, has countered fair trade with several small programs aimed at improving the productivity, marketing and efficiency of cocoa farmers worldwide, president Bill Guyton says. The foundation's position "is that each company makes its own marketing decisions." | |
