In The Christian Century, Rev. David Mesenbring provides an accounting of his experiences with fair trade. Mesenbring, who was an early advocate and adopter of fair trade practices and policies, thinks there’s good reason to doubt the efficacy of the movement as currently stands.

I was an early adopter of fair trade. Prior exposure to rural poverty in Africa had sensitized me to the plight of farmers in the global economy. Searching for a fair trade logo on my purchases of coffee and chocolate made me feel generous—as though I had sacrificed a bit of my economic interest to improve the lives of poor farmers. Convincing an entire congregation to sell fair trade goods during its coffee hour multiplied that generous feeling.

That “generous feeling” is about as far as many religious fair trade advocates have gotten. But Mesenbring goes much further.

Once he got to know more beyond the vague intentions behind fair trade, he found reason for doubt:

I’d never considered how much fair trade status costs farmers, nor the logistical impossibility of inspecting every small farm. In fact, I’d never given any thought at all to pliance gets monitored.

Mesenbring notes plexities of global trade, and concludes:

Today, an ever-evolving international fair trade movement makes it hard to know what standards are being certified by which mark. Worse still, research suggests fair trade isn’t rescuing farmers in the Global South who are struggling to survive the rapacious forces of global markets. In fact, fair trade’s biggest winners might well be the consciences of its consumers, along with retailers and movement promoters.

I mend reading Mesenbring’s thorough and sympathetic account of the history and challenges of fair trade. The fair trade movement appears to a classic case of good intentions frustrated by a lack of sound economic understanding.

What to do once one has grappled with the difficulties fair trade has experienced is a related but distinct question. Mesenbring’s narrative could be read as a realization that global capitalism cannot really be reformed. Or it could be read as what happens when good intentions meet economic realities. Irving Kristol once said that a neoconservative was simply “a liberal who has been mugged by reality.” I doubt Mesenbring would want to identify as a neoconservative (or a neoliberal for that matter), but his encounter with the economic realities of international trade and religious advocacy is worth considering.

He also makes use of a fine study by economist Victor V. Claar, Fair Trade? Its Prospects as a Poverty Solution, which is the best place to go for more about the realities of fair trade after Mesenbring’s story piques your interest. Claar’s expert treatment focuses on coffee, modity that Mesenbring says “has long been the movement’s modity and still accounts for half of all its sales.”

Read “What does a fair trade logo actually mean?” by David Mesenbring at The Christian Century and Fair Trade? Its Prospects as a Poverty Solution from the Acton Book Shop.