By Mary O’Hara
(VICE NEWS) A recently published four-year study suggests that many of the poorest workers in coffee and other farming industries are even worse off when employed by fair trade cooperatives.
The “Fairtrade, Employment and Poverty Reduction in Ethiopia and Uganda” study — which was published Sunday by University of London — focused on small farms in Uganda and Ethiopia and interviewed the lowest-wage freelance farm workers.
It found that even when fair trade premiums helped boost incomes for farm owners — ranging from small families to large plantation estates — the benefits failed to trickle down to workers that make up the majority of the industry’s labor force. Read more on VICE NEWS…