The Politics of Food Labeling and Certification - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 629

areas. Because the empirical literature in this area is not yet as well developed as that on
Organic certification, there are few conclusive answers, but the existing research war-
rants a review.
A number of studies document individual cases or small numbers of certified pro-
ducers. These studies tend to show that Fair Trade-certified farmers are doing relatively
well. In an evaluation of several cooperatives of cocoa farmers in Ecuador that sell cocoa
through a Fair Trade NGO, farmers reported that Fair Trade brought them benefits, par-
ticularly in the area of price, fair weighing and grading, marketing skills, organizational
development, and production techniques (Nelson and Galvez 2000). In his 2008 ethno-
graphic study of Costa Rican coffee farmers, Luetchford finds Fair Trade certification to
have a positive impact—the Fair Trade cooperative he studied marginally outperformed
a noncertified plant—but the research design failed to control for significant differences
between the two farms that might explain these results (Luetchford 2008).
Some research suggests that the impact of Fair Trade certification on farmer income
may be limited for cases in which farmers sell only a small portion of their crop to Fair
Trade buyers. It is not uncommon for farmers to sell to both the conventional and the
specialty market, piecing together market demand to try to make a living. Luetchford's
certified coffee growers, for example, sold just 2 percent of their coffee through “alter-
native” trade outlets (Luetchford 2008, p. 29). A study commissioned by the UK
Department for International Development (DFID) found that Fair Trade coffee pro-
ducers in Tanzania and cocoa producers in Ghana sold only a fraction of their product
to Fair Trade markets (and, therefore, received a Fair Trade premium for only a por-
tion of their products) (Jones, Bayley, Robins et al. 2000). Nelson and Martin (2013) find
some evidence of the same phenomenon.
In these and similar cases, benefits seem to be more significant in the nonincome area.
In a two-year study by the Center for Fair and Alternative Trade Studies on the effect of
Fair Trade on Mexican and Central American farmers, the transfer of technical skills,
improved marketing strategies, product diversification, and social benefits like clinics
and schools outstripped the benefits of increased income (Glazer 2007). In the case of
the Tanzanian coffee producers and the Ghanaian cocoa growers, the most important
impact of Fair Trade appears to be in the area of capacity building, rather than income
improvement (Jones, Bayley, Robins et al. 2000).
However, since these studies use small sample sizes, it would be inadvisable to draw
firm conclusions about the general effects of Fair Trade labeling and certification from
them. Although case studies can provide invaluable insights into the lives of Fair-Trade
farmers and the mechanisms by which certification may impact their livelihoods,
observations drawn from one or a few cases cannot be easily generalized to a whole
population.
A growing number of large- n quantitative studies measure the effects of certifica-
tion on farmers. In a series of studies focusing on Fair Trade-certified cocoa in Ghana
and Ecuador and tea in Kenya and India, Nelson and Martin (2013) conducted both
large-n surveys and qualitative research and found mixed results. The strongest indica-
tion of economic impact from these studies was increased market access, which was