Word: minimum
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...Many small businesses have cut back their staff to the minimum, so they are without the extra workers needed to plan for contingencies...
...agreement - think of it as a financial trade - the U.S. would buy an option to require China to lower its emissions below a certain agreed level. At the same time, Beijing would take out what amounts to an insurance policy to establish a minimum amount that Washington would pay Beijing if or when the U.S. exercised its option. The cost of Beijing's insurance policy and the cost to the U.S. of exercising its option on China's emissions levels would be set at roughly the same price...
...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 anymore." But even Fair Trade prices "haven't kept up" with the costs...
...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...
...lieu of imposing a major price hike, the FLO is reviewing other ways it can help farmers. It's making cheaper loans more widely available, providing more technical assistance to help farmers grow better-quality beans and may begin automatically adjusting its minimum price for inflation...