Where the words come from
Fairtrade certifying producers that meet standards on the environment and workers' conditions and pay; businesses buying at a Fairtrade minimum price and paying a Fairtrade premium; the premium as an additional sum over and above the minimum price paid into a communal fund that workers and farmers use as they decide to improve their social, economic and environmental conditions; the minimum and premium set by product and country of origin and reviewed so that costs of production are covered; an independent certification body inspecting producers; the minimum as a base price, with the market price often above it; some retailers passing the extra cost on to consumers and others absorbing it, so Fairtrade products are not always more expensive — CMA informal guidance: Fairtrade Shared Impact Initiative (21 November 2023), Competition and Markets Authority, GOV.UK, Crown copyright, Open Government Licence v3.0. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cma-informal-guidance-fairtrade-environmental-sustainability-agreement and https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65799999095987001295dfb1/A._Fairtrade_Foundation_informal_guidance.pdf. Changes: Paraphrased and condensed from paragraphs 1.5, 1.6 and 2.9 and footnote 13; the clinic, school and seedlings examples of premium spending, the point that the minimum bites only when world prices fall below it, and the planning and investment consequence are ours.
Fairtrade helping by ensuring farmers receive fair prices; only a tiny proportion of global commodities sold on Fairtrade terms; a Kenyan flower farm whose sales grew, with Fairtrade training, from 60% to 100% of its produce, 30% of it sold as Fairtrade; the Fairtrade agenda helping Kenya build a commercially-oriented farm sector that boosts value-added exports; a women's coffee co-operative, with Fairtrade support, supplementing once-a-year coffee proceeds with income from milling grain — Fairtrade Africa 10th Anniversary, Strathmore University: remarks by British High Commissioner Dr Christian Turner (24 September 2015), Foreign & Commonwealth Office and Department for International Development, GOV.UK, Open Government Licence v3.0. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/fairtrade-africa-10th-anniversary-strathmore-university. Changes: Paraphrased and condensed; the farm and co-operative are not named; the argument that a guaranteed price for one crop can slow diversification is ours, set against the speech's opposite case; the final judgement is ours.
DFID's Food Retail Industry Challenge Fund match-funding a project supporting 11,000 Kenyan small-scale tea growers to form co-operatives and achieve Fairtrade certification — Co-op project for Kenyan tea farmers (11 March 2011), Department for International Development, GOV.UK, Open Government Licence v3.0. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/co-op-project-for-kenyan-tea-farmers. Changes: Paraphrased; the point that the poorest farmers working alone may never get certified is ours.
A price floor keeping a price from falling below a given level; farm prices and incomes fluctuating, sometimes widely, and price supports preventing those swings; a floor above equilibrium making quantity supplied exceed quantity demanded — Principles of Economics 2e, OpenStax, licensed CC BY 4.0. https://openstax.org/books/principles-economics-2e/pages/3-4-price-ceilings-and-price-floors. Changes: Paraphrased and condensed; the legal floor generalised to a guaranteed minimum; US examples and dollar figures left out; the surplus result applied by us to certified output that buyers do not take on Fairtrade terms.
Questions, options, diagrams and feedback are our own. Figures credited to a source above are that source's; every other figure is invented to show the method.