Fair trade tea? Graduate student needs feedback for thesis, thanks!! (2026 Update)

This is an interesting survey, and I'm curious what you're actually trying to measure here.

None of my opinions about free trade practices were listed anywhere on the survey, so it's kind of difficult to measure them.

The survey misses the point (and so do a lot of other people) that free trade practices exist to insure people making a product receive a fair minimum wage for doing so, but that in the process it also insures that they won't make any more for doing so; if they make a product which is of higher quality they won't be selling it as free trade.

Consequently, free trade is fine for generic commodities, but for specialty items, it tends to narrow the range of quality down, meaning on the high side that there's no high quality material being sold.

This is great if you're making huge amounts of generic CTC assam tea, but if you're talking about the kind of single-estate teas that most of the folks in this group are talking about, it's not a good thing.

I'm horrified to even think about free trade wines....

--scott

All of the Cost Plus teas are now sold as Fair Trade. I think it will fade in a couple of years. If I worry about it at all I think is it really a Fair Trade item. I remember a college economics professor who said minimum wage keeps workers from unionizing.

Jim

It's definitely a good thing from the standpoint of the people making the product. It's not always a good thing from the standpoint of the product quality.

--scott