Abraham wrote:Hoi Polloi,
Thanks!
Could you elaborate on sustainable crops?
I still find the term more than a little ambiguous. If crops are properly planted/harvested and fields taken care of in between - isn't that a form of sustainability? Or, is the term "sustainable crops" more narrowly defined?
Would I be wrong in declaring "Fair-trade agreements" a type of price fixing?
Yes, that would be a form of sustainability. In contrast, harvesting rain forests without replanting or at a rate greater than one was replenishing would not be sustainable.
Fair Trade is more of a minimum wage to avoid price fixing below production cost by industrialized nations, thus keeping coffee-buying monopolies from running the farmers from impoverished nations into the ground. That's the theory. It's particularly associated with Ethiopian coffee. There's actually a huge and fascinating economics issue and history with Ethiopian coffee covering famine, drought, stock exchanges, the role of the government, technology access by the people, and more. There are a lot of initiatives that were and are developed to try to avoid another famine like the one they had where there was surplus in one part of the country and famine in another with no knowledge or means of moving those goods.
Here's a program that presents the stock exchange in a positive light. I had several articles that were critical and used a different economic theory, but I can't seem to readily find them.
I took the below definitions from
this website as they covered it better than I could.
Fair trade. Promotion of more equitable, less exploitative dealings with producers in developing countries. Sometimes called alternative trade. The fair trade movement is more visible in Europe. In terms of coffee production, fair trade principles stress minimum prices; credit availability; and stable, long-term business relationships directly with farmer cooperatives, avoiding intermediaries or middlemen. Sustainable agricultural practices are of perhaps secondary importance.
Sustainable. Here is another term that does not have a widely-accepted definition. For coffee agriculture and resource development, the term implies concern both for laborers' working conditions and for trading practices and land tenure systems that do not impoverish farmers—as well as sensitivity to the environment, minimization of pollution, and independence from non-renewable energy sources. At the intersection of ecology, economics, and politics, sustainability is concerned with the equitable allocation and consumption of resources, now and in the future.