Fairtrade and its criticism
Hi, I came across this article responding to a lot of the criticism of Fairtrade:
https://www.lowimpact.org/fair-trade-criticism/
What about its claim that the “food shortages” that are commonly used to justify the environmental and economic injustices of the Green Revolution were essentially made up? I wasn’t sure what to make of these claims, and was hoping someone else could provide some input. Thanks:)
I can’t find where the author actually supports their claim that food shortages were “non-existent”, so it’s hard to know how to respond.
I’m not even close to an expert here, but my impression (from Wikipedia and other light reading) is that most scholars credit the Green Revolution with preventing famines that would likely have happened otherwise, as well as increasing food security more generally — rather than ending a bunch of ongoing famines.
See Our World in Data for many statistics related to global malnutrition and its consequences. Things have clearly been getting steadily better since at least the 1980s, as the world has gotten better at producing food.
I won’t go point-by-point through the article, but it seems clear that the author wasn’t trying to present any kind of balanced view — though the same is true for most authors, on both sides of any debate. I’d recommend trying to search for information about the Green Revolution and its consequences (and about the costs/benefits of Fair Trade) from a variety of sources, rather than worrying about finding counterpoints to one specific article; that might help you figure out which facts are indisputable, how the different “sides” place value and importance on different factors, etc.