Word: markets
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...million other small coffee growers don't have a lot of career alternatives. So you'd think they would be enthusiastic about Fair Trade - a global campaign that for 25 years has sought to bring struggling Third World farmers, including Antonio, out of poverty by paying them higher-than-market prices for everything from coffee to quinoa. Along the way, it has recruited retail giants like Starbucks, which is the globe's largest purchaser of Fair Trade - certified coffee...
Fair Trade pays $1.55 per lb. for Antonio's organic coffee, almost 10% more than the market price. But Antonio is left with only 50¢ per lb. after paying Fair Trade cooperative fees, government taxes and farming expenses. By year's end, he says, from the few thousand pounds he grows, he'll pocket about $1,000 - around half the meager minimum wage in Guatemala - or $2.75 a day, not enough for Starbucks' cheapest latte. The same holds true for other Guatemalan growers, like Mateo Reynoso, also from Quetzaltenango. Without Fair Trade, he says, "we wouldn't be growing coffee...
...most coffee growers, Fair Trade is still slightly more lucrative than the open market. Two years ago, the Germany-based Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO), which sets worldwide prices and standards, raised the minimum per-pound price of nonorganic coffee 9¢, to $1.35 (a dime of which goes to social programs like scholarships for growers' children). That's 15¢ higher than the current market rate. And yet, according to Fair Trade researcher Christopher Bacon of the University of California, Berkeley, the per-pound price that's needed for farmers to rise above subsistence is really more than $2. Farmer advocates...
...history. The sportswear manufacturer contracted with NFL teams to produce hats and headgear with official team logos. But the NFL decided to give an exclusive leaguewide license to Reebok in 2000, leading American Needle to sue, claiming the NFL's action violated the Sherman Antitrust Act by limiting the market for who could produce team-branded merchandise...
...still not truly resolved issues that are certain to be argued again in the broader arena of the House and Senate floors: Whether the bill should include a requirement that individuals who do not get coverage from their employers or from government programs buy it on the open market. If so, how can lawmakers ensure that people who are required to buy coverage can actually afford it? Should it include a requirement that all but the smallest firms provide a package of health benefits to their workers, and if so, how would it be enforced? How should the proposal...