How much more do growers receive for Fair Trade-organic coffee?

Jeremy Weber

Food Policy, 2011, vol. 36, issue 5, 677-684

Abstract: I use a representative sample of coffee growing households in southern Mexico to estimate the price premium and gross income gain from participating in Fair Trade-organic markets through grower cooperatives. For the 2004-2005 season, FT-organic growers received an average premium of 12.8 cents per pound, yielding a gross income gain of 5% of total household income or about 26 dollars per household member. The gain is net of the costs of cooperative participation but not of other costs incurred to become certified and suggests that price premiums alone have a limited potential to increase household returns from growing coffee. More broadly speaking, the finding raises questions about the persistence of substantial price premiums associated with social or environmental labeling initiatives.

Keywords: Fair; Trade; Organic; Coffee; Premiums; Certification; Cooperatives (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (53)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306919211000716
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Journal Article: How much more do growers receive for Fair Trade-organic coffee? (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jfpoli:v:36:y:2011:i:5:p:677-684

Access Statistics for this article

Food Policy is currently edited by J. Kydd

More articles in Food Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().