What does “fair trade” mean? You won’t find one single answer. Here we look at the market profile of fair trade — the players, controversies, benefits and drawbacks.

Fair trade in international commerce has two distinct meanings. In trade negotiations, the term is used broadly to argue that subsidies and disguised barriers skew the global trade system against developing countries and commodity producers. Former World Bank chief economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, for example, argues for “fair trade for all” in the context of the latest WTO round of trade liberalization, the Doha Development Agenda.

Find out more about the origins of the fair trade movement, as well as the main labels and networks of organizations active today.

Fair trade is one of the few development models that reaches marginalized (often indigenous) rural communities who rarely benefit from economic growth and who have little choice between subsistence farming or migration to the cities.

Fair trade has become the centre of intense media attention and a topic of interest to many development organizations. As a result, ITC’s senior management held a discussion in March 2006 on ways in which ITC could play a role in fair trade and bring non-governmental organizations — with their commitment to improving life for the poorest communities — into mainstream trade development.

Don’t look at fair trade as a charity — treat it as a business model, argues Paola Ghillani, former head of the Max Havelaar fair trade organization in Switzerland.

Who is “the responsible consumer”, that new and powerful figure in business school lectures and trade negotiations? Someone who buys from a firm that shows “corporate social responsibility”, it seems.