Fair World Project’s Statement in Response to the “Fair Trade Employment and Poverty Reduction in Uganda and Ethiopia Report”
The Fair Trade, Employment and Poverty Reduction Project (FTEPR) released its final report on its four-year research into agricultural labor in Ethiopia and Uganda this past April. One of the main conclusions of this report was that wages among workers in fair trade certified operations were on average lower, and working conditions no better or sometimes worse, than on farms that were not certified as fair trade. Included in the farms researched were large-scale plantations, which are relatively recent and controversial additions to fair trade and their inclusion in the study complicates its findings.