Word: tradings
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...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...
...foresaw this dilemma a decade ago, when coffee prices, which had been falling since the end of the Cold War, dropped to as low as 45¢ per lb. Fair Trade was the small farmer's savior during that crisis, paying twice the going rate. Starbucks joined the cause and this year has pledged to double the amount of Fair Trade coffee it buys, to 40 million lb., 40% of the Fair Trade beans the U.S. imports. The company declined to comment on whether Fair Trade's benefits fall short of its vision or how much it would need to raise...
With $1.75 billion in worldwide sales last year, Fair Trade is still a small player in the $70 billion global coffee industry, dominated by leviathans like Nestlé and Kraft. Because producer countries reap only $5 billion of that $70 billion, Fair Trade can help growers get more of their share. "Fair Trade is still, and will remain, a better deal for farmers," says Bacon. But it can help only so much. "This isn't a condemnation of the Fair Trade model," says Peyser. "It's a fact of life." One that all coffee drinkers may have to swallow...
...recession has its silver linings. According to a forthcoming report by the International Energy Agency, sluggish trade, dwindling industrial output and greener government policies have put global carbon dioxide emissions on track to drop 2.6% in 2009, the largest slide in 40 years. Analysts hope the dip will bolster efforts to reach a new climate pact in Copenhagen in December. But so far, despite repeated calls for action, world leaders have made scant progress toward replacing the Kyoto Protocol, which expires...
...appointed to the New York City Planning Commission by Mayor Ed I. Koch—a post he held until 1986. Bond lived and worked in New York City at the time of his death, and was responsible for the National September 11th Museum at the World Trade Center...