Chocolate and Fairtrade Musings
Feb. 15th, 2020 08:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unspeakablehorrorOne of the things I collect is dark chocolate bars, which I keep in a large ziploc bag for whenever I am craving chocolate. These things mostly seem to last quite a while. A chocolate bar that I just finished said it was best by Oct 2017, but still tasted excellent. Given how much chocolate I've collected and how infrequently I eat chocolate due to its caffeine content, I don't think I'm in any danger of running out for a while.
Anyway, I was looking at the various packages with their assortment of labels, and was wondering what the different fairtrade labels meant. I found a site that talks about a number of them here:
https://www.fairtradewinds.net/guide-fair-trade-labels/
This appears to be just a company that specializes in selling fairtrade items, so I'd like to find a more neutral sources that talk about the differences between these labels, but I do think it's a good starting point to gather info for additional searches.
One thing I was wondering was what sort of criticisms have been levelled at fairtrade organizations and what are some responses to them: Here's a site that mentions and responds to some of the criticisms of fairtrade:
https://www.lowimpact.org/fair-trade-criticism/
I think there's some valid points made here, though I wouldn't say I agree with all the article's points. Specifically, I would argue that there's a fundamental difference regarding ownership (public vs private) between what happened with enclosure and what's happened with bigger farms buying up the land of smaller farms, but I don't believe the end result of either has been in a positive direction overall, so I can see why such a comparison might be made even if I feel it misses an important distinction.
Anyway, I was looking at the various packages with their assortment of labels, and was wondering what the different fairtrade labels meant. I found a site that talks about a number of them here:
https://www.fairtradewinds.net/guide-fair-trade-labels/
This appears to be just a company that specializes in selling fairtrade items, so I'd like to find a more neutral sources that talk about the differences between these labels, but I do think it's a good starting point to gather info for additional searches.
One thing I was wondering was what sort of criticisms have been levelled at fairtrade organizations and what are some responses to them: Here's a site that mentions and responds to some of the criticisms of fairtrade:
https://www.lowimpact.org/fair-trade-criticism/
I think there's some valid points made here, though I wouldn't say I agree with all the article's points. Specifically, I would argue that there's a fundamental difference regarding ownership (public vs private) between what happened with enclosure and what's happened with bigger farms buying up the land of smaller farms, but I don't believe the end result of either has been in a positive direction overall, so I can see why such a comparison might be made even if I feel it misses an important distinction.