An Exploratory Analysis of the FAIRTRADE Certified Producer Organisations

Abstract

The main objective of this research was to provide an exploratory analysis of the Fairtrade producer organisations’ network, focusing mainly on the revenues that certified organisations derive from their participation in Fairtrade. Using descriptive statistics and regression techniques, we analysed the Fairtrade affiliated organisations from the comprehensive dataset on worldwide Fairtrade certified producers. The database comprises 1016 producer organisations and plantations, distributed in 65 developing countries during 2015 including all products and countries. We identified some features of farmer organisations that affect the creation of revenues, and we investigated the fraction of revenues that producer organizations derive from FT compared to their overall revenues. The results highlight the different approaches to FT by the certified organisations and do not reveal any dominance in terms of revenues by any type of producer organisations or by organisations involved in FT for the longest time. This research contributes to deepening the knowledge about Fairtrade operations and provide useful information to the debate on the role of Fairtrade in developing profitable value chains for producer organisations in developing countries.