Fair Trade System Research Articles

Training in Marketing Skills Associated With The Fair Trade System For Sustainable Economic Development in Artisanal Fishermen in The Rural Area of Manta Canton, Ecuador

Objective: This article proposes a methodology for training in marketing skills, associated with the fair trade system for sustainable economic development in artisanal fishermen in the rural area of Manta canton, Ecuador. Theoretical Framework: The presented text offers a comprehensive vision of the training of marketing skills, with a particular focus on the context of artisanal fishermen and the application of fair trade. Method: The type of research assumed is quantitative, explanatory, experimental, and within it, the pre-experimental type, since it first explains the logic, the path, and the way to follow for the training of marketing skills in fishermen in the rural area of Manta canton, Ecuador. Likewise, the results that were achieved from a quantitative point of view with the implementation of the methodology are presented. Results and Discussion: This research represents a valuable contribution to the field of education and rural development, demonstrating the importance of comprehensive and contextualized training for the empowerment of producers and the construction of a more just and sustainable future. Training in marketing skills, based on fair trade, is revealed as a key tool to improve the living conditions of artisanal fishermen and promote more equitable and sustainable economic development. Implications of the Research: The results of this research have important implications for the formulation of public policies, education, and international cooperation, and can serve as a basis for future research that promotes sustainable development and equity in the fishing sector. Originality/Value: The research presented stands out for its originality in focusing on a little-studied sector such as artisanal fishermen and linking marketing training with fair trade. Its value lies in its ability to improve the living conditions of fishermen, strengthen local development, and promote fairer trade practices.

공정거래사건 집행 관련 쟁점과 개선방안

Several issues are being discussed regarding the enforcement of fair trade cases. First, whether to introduce warrantism in relation to judicial control of fair trade cases. However, the introduction of warrantism into the FTC investigation is to change the FTC investigation system, and it is necessary to take a careful approach in terms of supplementing punishment. However, in order to strengthen judicial control, it is necessary to supplement the regulations for field investigations, guarantee the right to assist lawyers, recognize the right to refuse to state statements, and supplement the right to copy data and access. Second, problems have also been raised about the administrative trial procedure under the Fair Trade Act. Even if an objection under the Fair Trade Act is regarded as the nature of a special administrative trial under the Administrative Trial Act, it may be problematic in terms of independence and fairness of the administrative trial that the disposition agency and the ruling agency are the same. However, it is not desirable in light of the expertise and specificity of the fair trade case to use a decision as a general administrative trial procedure to resolve the issue of independence and fairness. Therefore, it is necessary to devise a plan to deal with objection cases by forming a separate decision committee within the FTC. Finally, whether to introduce a three-trial system is also an issue. The Fair Trade Case is operated by the Seoul High Court and the Supreme Court's two-trial system, which is a global standard adopted by most competition laws, not only in Korea. The introduction of the three-trial system expands the rights of the accused, but on the contrary, side effects are expected, such as not being in line with the purpose of the fair trade system, which needs to quickly restore the competitive order. Therefore, it is desirable to maintain the two-trial system as it is, but even if the two-trial system is maintained, it is necessary to strengthen the independence of the FTC, strengthen fairness and expertise, complete the Fair Trade Procedure Act, and strengthen the expertise of the court.

An intuitive fuzzy multi-attribute decision making method based on a herding psychology improved score function for trading decisions

The amount of used new energy vehicle transactions is increasing quickly as the social economy matures, yet prices are typically low, making it increasingly difficult to select a fair trading system. Enhancing the score function is crucial in order to account for how different people’s attitudes affect the outcome of decisions and to choose an acceptable trading strategy that is applicable to other scenarios and has a favorable impact on transaction flow. The choice of a trading scheme for new energy-using vehicles is usually regarded as a multi-attribute decision problem. In this paper, the Intuitionistic Fuzzy Hybrid Averaging (IFHA) operator integration operator with an improved score function is proposed based on the influence of herd mentality on decision-makers. In order to examine the correlation between the score function and the decision outcome using the Spearman rank correlation coefficient, an application to a real situation and some comparative analyses are provided. The outcomes demonstrate that the decision-making process for used car trading schemes can make use of the proposed improved score function.

State of the art: The impact of sustainability standards

Abstract Voluntary sustainability standards emerged in the 1980s with the promise of making agrifood systems sustainable, and have developed over time into rather sophisticated systems of rules and sanctions. With this promise of change, has also come an interest in understanding whether or not change has come about. This is particularly pertinent as public agencies and governments are increasingly seeking to use sustainability standards as proxies for progress towards sustainability. In this short commentary, I share some of the recent knowledge about the impact of sustainability standards and Fairtrade standards in particular. I explore the impact of the use of the Fairtrade Premium and the impact of engagement with the Fairtrade system on business practices. I conclude with some reflections on the importance of standards in current debates in Europe.

Formation mechanism of on-grid power tariff using game model of complete information

The key to the reform of the power system is to design a fair bidding and trading system. Analyzing the transaction process of electricity price competition, suppressing market power and other unfavorable factors, and finding a perfect bidding system are the research goals of this paper. In order to study the competition in the power spot market and power contract market, this paper employs the game model of complete information and the game theory as a tool. The power spot market adopts the Market Clearing Price (MCP) settlement method, in which the power grid determines the maximal real-time price of the generator node as the MCP. The price is based on the three bidding strategy curves of the power plant. As a result, a Nash equilibrium of power plant revenue is formed. According to the Cournot model and Stackelberg model that analyze the power contract market, the long-term equilibrium price of Stackelberg model in the power contract market is higher than that of the perfectly competitive market and less than or equal to the output of perfect monopoly market. The long-term equilibrium price and output in the power contract market are both certain and stable. This paper has analyzed the static game of complete information in the power market and carried out practical application. The results show that the bidding strategies of power plants have a Nash equilibrium and they have an incentive to collude. The MCP mechanism cannot solve the problem of market power influence. The conclusion of the research provides a basis for the design of the power hybrid auction system.

Fairtrade on coffee farming in Takengon District, Central Aceh Regency

Fairtrade in coffee farming has been widely applied in several coffee-producing countries. Not only providing a quality guarantee to coffee consumers, but fair trade also guarantees higher price and benefit for coffee farmers in exchange for all the efforts made during coffee cultivation. Gayo Coffee is one of the commodities that is being produced and becomes exporting commodity in Indonesia. The Fairtrade system has been implemented by coffee Gayo farmers in Takengon District Since 2018. There are two groups of Gayo Coffee farmers in Takengon District, non-fairtrade and fairtrade coffee farmers. The result of study shows that productivity incremental of non-fairtrade farmer is greater than fairtrade farmer due to the requirements of fairtrade such as the use of organic fertilizers which causes farmers’ productivity to be lower. However, income incremental of non-fairtrade farmer is lower than fairtrade farmer due to additional price that is only given to the fairtrade farmer.

Fair trade and artisanal fishing in Paraná coast: between speech and reality

Paraná Coast has 90 kilometers of coastline with an approximate population of 4,256 artisanal fishermen who carry out their activities in the bays and in the open sea, most of them classified as small fishermen, who historically have an asymmetrical distribution of commercialization profits imposed by retailers. Thus, in view of the need to establish new patterns of fish commercialization in the region, this research aimed to carry out a case study related to the fair trade of fish in this region. Descriptive exploratory research was carried out with 10 (ten) fishermen and the management of the only regional company that includes the practice of fair trade in its values. The study revealed that positive factors, especially security in commercial relations, fair value paid for fish and valuation of family labor, were the issues most valued by the interviewed fishermen. In relation to the negative factors, the company not absorbing the entire production, the time to pay for the production and the limited hours for delivering the fish, were the most cited issues, however they were not classified as situations that could be factors of rupture of the business process. Finally, the analysis of the fairtrade system adopted in the investigated company, allows to consider that it was installed, empirically tested and has had positive results, and can be classified in fact as a fairtrade practitioner. This model can be classified as an alternative development tool or model to the dominant neoliberal model in Brazil that can be replicated in whole or in part in other fishing regions.

WTO’s Trade Liberalisation, Agricultural Growth, and Poverty Alleviation in Pakistan

Pakistan is an agrarian based developing country, and like many other developing countries, its agriculture sector is subjected to domestic forces of demand and supply and changes in prices at international level, as well. More specifically, in the late 1990s, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) emerged as one the major players affecting such market changes more vigorously at international arena. The WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture, which was established as a result of the 1986-94 Uraguay Round talks, requires, for both developed and developing countries, to initiate a process of reforms in their agrarian economies with the objective of establishing a fair and market oriented agricultural trading system through multilateral trade negotiations. This Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) specifically asks for major reductions in export subsidies, domestic support and import barriers on agricultural products to achieve this objective, the WTO’s Agreement of Agriculture [WTO (2001)] had set the following quantitative targets for cuts in each of the three specified area, namely import tariffs, domestic supports and export subsidies.

Legal Policy in Regulating the Sale of State Houses Class III (Idle State Property) Without Auction to Civil Servants Reviewed from the Perspective of “The Theory of Fairness” From John Rawls

Auction is universally recognized as the most accountable and fair-trading system. This is also recognized by the Republic of Indonesia, as stated in Article 48 of the Law of the Republic of Indonesia Number 1 of 2004 concerning the State Treasury junto Article 61 Government Regulation Article 61 Number 27 of 2014 concerning Management of State Property, where it is stated that all sales of State Property must be done through auction. The problem is, in the same Article there are exceptions in certain matters without going through an auction. This particular matter relates to discrimination against civil servants in the arrangement for the sale of State Houses Class III (Idle State Property) without having to go through an auction and even with a price of 50% of the valuation. Of course, the legal policy that apply these exceptions in addition to causing legal problems, also philosophical, theoretical, and sociological issues. The legal issue that arises is a conflict of norms between what should be (das sollen) in the constitution and the norms written in laws and regulations (das sein). In this case there has been a conflict of norm between Article 27 paragraph (1) of the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia which contradicts the regulations related to the regulation of State Houses as State Property in the form of land and buildings. From the juridical problems mentioned above. The legal issues mentioned above, then there are relevant questions to be studied. The question is: how is the legal policy that gives exceptions or differential treatment (“discrimination”) to civil servants viewed from the perspective of social justice from John Rawls in accordance with the principles and goals of the Indonesian nation, namely to realize Social Justice for All Indonesian People. The question is the research problem referred in this paper

Introduction of a New Exception: The Protection of User-Generated Content under UK Copyright Law

The rapidly developing Web 2.0 technologies positively affect the development of User-generated Content (UGC). UGC is considered as various types of multimedia content generated by online users that are available publicly. The situations of UGC are not optimistic in the UK, as the current copyright protection for original works is deemed to be over strict, which leads to a series of problems such as an inhibition of freedom of users and hindrance to economic growth and innovation. In order to explore how to effectively introduce the new exception into the copyright law of the UK, this paper refers to the copyright protection approaches of the copyright laws of Canada and the US for UGC. With respect to the Canadian experience, Canadian copyright law adopts a semi-open dealing system, whereas US copyright law establishes a fair use system to protect UGC. Both methods have achieved some degree of success in practice. However, each of them has its drawbacks. The introduction of semi-open fair trade system into the UK copyright system will improve the flexibility and efficiency copyright protection of UGC. But it has also been criticized for imposing too much emphasis on non-commercial purposes and for overlapping protection issues. The core advantage of the US fair use system is that it is flexible to balance exclusive rights with satisfying social, cultural and economic needs, but one of the realistic problems is that the UK does not have a tradition of fair use system and whether it can be implemented in the UK copyright law remains to be seen. After a comparison between the US approach and Canadian approach to the copyright protection of UGC, it can be concluded that a semi-open fair dealing regime for a UGC exception in UK copyright law with reference to Canadian experience is much more suitable for the UK, which will provide more flexibility and legal certainty.

Legal Issues on Subsidies of The Agricultural Products on WTO Frame Work

The WTO was founded with the main objective of building a fair and market-oriented trading system. Fair trade means free and no intervention from anywhere to regulate the market. This applies to all sectors of the economy but especially concerns the agricultural sector which is the basis of a country's defense. Various efforts have been made by the WTO in terms of making trade regulations in the agricultural sector which of course aims to realize this goal. It is well known that in order to stabilize food prices, ensure abundant food production, guarantee farmers' basic income, and in general strengthen the agricultural segment of the national economy, the government has implemented various assistance in the form of assistance to agricultural product producers in the country. This assistance is called a subsidy which can take various forms, namely in the form of tariff barriers, non-tariff barriers, tax levies, positive regulations and direct subsidies to both agricultural producers and exporters. In this study, the authors examine the legal issues regarding subsidies for agricultural products within the WTO framework. The main issue in this legal research is how the legal issues regarding subsidies for agricultural products within the WTO framework. The main objective of this legal research is to find out the legal issues regarding subsidies for agricultural products within the WTO framework. This legal research is a normative legal research in which legal sources are collected through literature study. A relatively detailed review of the content of legal issues regarding subsidies for agricultural products in the WTO framework is discussed in this paper. The results of this study indicate that agriculture is one of the important trade negotiations in the WTO through the rules contained in the AoA. Agreements to implement commitments from disciplines in the AoA, from WTO member countries, are expected to be reached by both developing and developed countries

The moral branding of Fairtrade: Opportunities and pitfalls of visual representations in the Fairtrade system – empirical insights on the perspectives of German consumers

The Fairtrade system can be considered as one of the most successful real-world experiments of alternative economies. However, Fairtrade more than other alternative economic approaches relies on mass market mechanisms and the sale of its products via conventional distribution channels and retail outlets. To gradually transform the ‘unfair’ mechanisms of world trade and to achieve its social and environmental goals, Fairtrade requires a constant growth in sales. This also means that the marketing of Fairtrade goods in the consumer countries is subject to established capitalist mechanisms of advertising and demand creation. Although Fairtrade’s brand building aims at differentiation through alternative values of cooperation, trust, and fairness, it also works within the constraints of simplified and abridged advertising messages. More often than not, contrasts and stereotypes are over-emphasized – a phenomenon that critics call the ‘exploitation of difference’. In this way, new forms of ‘distancing’ and ‘othering’ are constantly built up and reinforced. Individuals, livelihoods, production practices, and entire landscapes in the Global South become commodified and are used for brand development and sales promotion. This paper examines these issues based on interviews and a questionnaire survey among German consumers. Our empirical insights indicate that the visual language used for Fairtrade marketing has to be targeted to critical consumers, who are increasingly skeptical of overly moralizing and simplified images with exaggerated contrasts between the ‘different worlds’ of producers in the South and consumers in the North. However, it should also be noted that Fairtrade Germany is increasingly aware of challenges in its visual communication and is intensively reflecting on its visual language.

A Fair and Privacy-Preserving Image Trading System Based on Blockchain and Group Signature

With the rise of digital images in our daily lives, there is a growing need to provide an image trading market where people can monetize their images and get desired images at prices that fit their budget. Those images are usually uploaded and stored onto centralized image trading service providers’ servers and the transactions for image trading are processed by these providers. Unfortunately, transaction unfairness and users’ privacy breaches have become major concerns since the service providers might be untrusted and able to manipulate image trading prices and infer users’ private information. Recently, several approaches have been proposed to address the unfairness issue by using the decentralized ledger technique and smart contract, but users’ privacy protection is not considered. In this paper, we propose a fair and privacy-preserving protocol that supports image fair exchange and protect user privacy. In particular, we exploit blockchain and Merkle tree to construct a fair image trading protocol with low communication overhead based on smart contract, which serves as an external judge that resolves disputes between buyers and sellers in image transactions. Moreover, we extend a popular short group signature scheme to protect users’ identity privacy, prevent linkability of transactions from being inferred, and ensure traceability of malicious users who may sell fake images and/or refuse to pay. Finally, we design and build a practical and open-source image trading system to evaluate the performance of our proposed protocol. Experimental results demonstrate its effectiveness and efficiency in real-world applications.

Debating the role of Fair Trade in the context of socio-economic transformation in South Africa

The notion of Fair Trade is a unique idea conceptualised historically in Northern countries to advance equitable and just trading processes that could provide an alternative to the mainstream trading system in the world. Northern activists working with producers, labourers and other impoverished sectors of the Global South are using market-based strategies to mobilise consumer awareness in order to bolster incomes and empower Southern producers and workers (Murray & Raynolds, 2007, p. 4). Fair Trade as a system is seen as a progressive attempt to transform the global exchange of products in a way that ensures ethical and socially just methods of production. Barrientos, Conroy and Jones (2007, p. 54) point out that in the United States Fair Trade's dramatic growth has accentuated underlying differences in the movement and tensions between the movement-based Alternative Trade Organisations (ATO)-led Fair Trade, and certified Fair Trade in mainstream outlets. The limits of the project of Fair Trade are well documented and critiqued by scholars with an appreciation of its limitations. The South African context of Fair Trade needs to align to the social conditions within which agricultural production takes place and the politics of social justice, equity and empowerment. For a South African product to be considered ‘fair’ while the social formation of the country and practices in various sectors still resemble historical inequalities – reflective of South Africa's colonial and apartheid history – should be seen as contradictory. The Fair Trade system is not as yet well entrenched in South Africa's political and social culture. For it to be embraced by a wider section of constituencies it needs to go beyond a business-driven process to one that reaches out to civil society. In this article I illustrate what the missing questions are in the South African context of Fair Trade and issues that need serious consideration for Fair Trade to have a wider impact.

Developing Fair Trade fruit supply chains from the forests of Senegal's Casamance

As core certified Fairtrade products have become mainstream in the UK market since the late 1990s, Traidcraft Exchange has focused energies on bringing new innovative supply chains and new small-producer organisations into the wider Fair Trade system. The case study presented here focuses on indigenous ‘superfood’ fruits from the forests of Senegal's Casamance region. Traidcraft Exchange has worked in partnership with two local processing SMEs and 2,200 small-scale producers in the Casamance to develop transparent and fair supply chains for these fruits. The work was catalysed by, but is not limited to, the development of a new range of Fair Trade juice drinks for the UK market. The case study highlights some of the achievements and challenges faced by the programme, particularly with reference to its post-conflict setting. It situates the work within the broader context of the ‘leave no one behind’ agenda and explores how a trade-based programme has contributed towards this aim. Of particular note here are the development of social capital, small producer negotiating power and improved value chain coordination.

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT AND HUMAN SECURITY: A JOURNEY TOWARDS A HUMANE GLOBAL WORLD

The human security and human development issues are intertwined and can not be separated from the latter to the former. Those two concept’s main goals are to eradicate poverty and increase the life quality of human beings, so it has to be respected in international and national level, especially after United Nations adopted the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) as the outcome of UN Millenium Summit 2000. MDGs’ main focuses are as follows: eradicate extreme poverty, achieve universal primary education, empower women, developing a global partnership for development. The sustainable developments in which consists of economic development, social development and protection of environment is also needed to reach the MDGs’ main goals. Moreover, to reach the main goals of MDGs, developed countries have to follow the Millenium Development Compact, in the context of providing help for developing countries to create an economic global and a fair trade system. Furthermore, it is important for developing countries to prepare theirselves to put MDGs’ main goals into their national development program.

Doha Development Agenda Negotiations on Agriculutal Sector

When Doha Round offically opens in Doha, Qatar in November 2001, the parties of the WTO agreed the round named by Doha Development Agenda (DDA). The majority developing countries argues that the previous round was created the regulations whose just make the developed countries gain more profit and dominate global trade. This article gave the information on the DDA development in agriculture, in order to increase the reformation in agriculture to get the fair and equal global trade system, this article gave the proportional picture and position whose shown by the developing countries in the WTO rounds in 3 problems, market access, domestic support, and export subsidies.

Developing a Fairtrade rice supply chain from Myanmar: achievements, challenges, lessons

Traidcraft Exchange and its sister business Traidcraft plc have been developing Fair Trade supply chains for over three decades. As core certified ‘Fairtrade' products have become mainstream in UK markets since the late 1990s, Traidcraft Exchange has focused energies on bringing innovative supply chains and small-producer organisations into the wider Fair Trade system. The case study presented here is of rice sourced from smallholder farmers in Myanmar's Ayeyarwady region: the world's first Fairtrade product from Myanmar. The case study illustrates how Traidcraft Exchange's explicit focus on small producers and innovating new supply chains from ‘left behind' communities can work in practice. It explains challenges faced at both the supplier and market end. It seeks to show how broader programmatic aims to strengthen small producer skills and organisational capacity to engage with trade on fairer terms can mitigate risks associated with export trade to the challenging UK market.

Alleviating inequity and promoting a moral economy through Fair Trade: how can reluctant consumers become part of the solution?

ABSTRACT Anchored in social-justice philosophy, the Fair Trade (FT) system aims to help producers in poor/developing countries through contributions from consumers in wealthy parts of the world. Focusing on consumers who have not yet adopted FT products, we examine marketing options for broadening the Fair Trade system by encouraging the involvement of this consumer segment. Based on equity theory, across three studies, we test if fairness considerations increase consumers’ willingness-to-pay the FT premium and illustrate the role of product type (utilitarian versus hedonic) in stimulating willingness-to-pay. Individual differences in consumers’ social-value-orientation are taken into account, and the strategic implications of marketing FT products to reluctant consumers are highlighted.

Eliciting willingness to pay for fairtrade products with information

Since its foundation, Fairtrade certification has successfully entered the mainstream market in most developed countries, and certified products can be found on the shelves of the most famous retailers. However, using labels to inform consumers about the ethical sustainability of products does not imply that they will read or use them at the time of purchase, and providing additional information has been identified as a viable method to increase the pool of buyers of certified products. Using Becker-Degroot-Marschak experimental auction and white refined cane sugar packs, we elicit the homegrown value that consumers in Milan (Italy) associate with Fairtrade certification, and we investigate the effect of providing additional information about Fairtrade on their willingness to pay. Our results show that consumers positively evaluate the presence of the certification on the products as they are willing to pay a premium for the certified products, and the premium increases when consumers are exposed to additional information regarding the Fairtrade system. Furthermore, combining the results of the auction with data collected through questionnaires, we analyze consumers' profiles concerning their attitude towards Fairtrade certification and response to information.