Fair Trade: Help to those in Poverty or A guilt wagon for those in the rich west.?

Question

If a farmer produes a product that has to low a value on the open market for them to survive should they not grow something else, band together with other producers and form a trade union that will uplift prices (OPEC for oil and DeBeers for diamonds) or make the basic raw product into a higher value product. Does not the FairTrade system simply rid the west of its guilt while negatively stopping the grower from inovating forward.

Answer 1

I think these should be cooperatives - but at he moment it is just a select few who provide goods for fair trades, and the majority of farmers just continue struggling. Fairtrade is really only fair for the minority of farmers, and the supermarket giants selling these goods on.