Opinion: "Fairtrade has failed to deliver justice for farmers"

For more than three decades, Fairtrade certification has promised consumers a way to enjoy chocolate with a clean conscience. By paying a little extra, we are told, farmers in the Global South receive a fairer deal. Yet beneath the familiar logo lies a system that has failed to deliver real justice for the farmers who grow cacao.

The Fairtrade mark was designed to guarantee smallholders a minimum price and improved working conditions. But has this reality been achieved? Despite its popularity in the Global North, many cacao farmers remain trapped in poverty, while child labour and deforestation linked to cocoa cultivation continue to rise. The chocolate industry is worth billions, but less than 8% of that wealth reaches the farmers.

Who Really Benefits?

Over the past few decades, the price paid for a tonne of cacao beans has generally been in decline (except for the last two years). The Fairtrade Minimum Price (FMP) has typically been only marginally higher—by about 5–10%—yet now, even as the market price of cacao has risen sharply, the FMP has not been adjusted accordingly. This is despite the fact that farmers’ costs have increased dramatically since 2020.

Cacao buyers who want to pay the same or less for cacao beans to increase profits and not pass on costs to consumers who want to pay the same price for their chocolate. Fairtrade has not been able to address this issue. Meanwhile, the farmers are putting in the same amount or more resources every year and even FMP may not have been able to offer a living minimum wage.

Fairtrade has launched a new Fairtrade Income Reference Price, but experts including organisations such as Solidaridad have said that this “does not reflect the right of cacao farmers to earn a living income.”

Furthermore, certification also comes at a cost. Fairtrade farmers must pay steep fees to maintain their status, while multinationals such as Nestlé face relatively few compliances demand. They can continue sourcing cacao unethically, while selling Fairtrade chocolate on the side. For farmers unable to afford certification, exclusion from the market is the only option. This creates a two-tier system that locks out the very people Fairtrade claims to support. Why should the organisations who are more ethical, have to pay extra for certifications to show they are, whereas the ones abusing and destroying our planet and communities do not have to pay anything at all?

What emerges is a troubling picture: Fairtrade certification is not dismantling global inequalities but helping to socialise colonialism. Cacao only grows in the South, but the processing, branding and profits remain concentrated in the importing countries of Europe and North America. This means they capture the wealth and prestige and can offer their chocolate as Swiss, Belgian or ‘made in the UK’. All the fees made from the certification process are retained by national Fairtrade Organisations, who are also in the North and not in countries of origin.

This is not liberation! It is the rebranding of a colonial trade model for the ethical consumer era.

An Alternative: Value-Added-At-Source (VAS)

There is another way. The “Value-Added-At-Source (VAS)” model empowers farmers and their communities by harvesting and producing chocolate bars in cacao-growing countries, often through partnerships with WFTO-certified enterprises. This approach avoids costly certification, includes small-scale and indigenous farmers, and ensures at least 50% of the wealth remains in the producing nation.

VAS, also sometimes referred to as “Tree to Bar”, is not just about higher incomes. It is about knowledge transfer, industrial development, and cultural ownership. It enables cacao growing countries to move from being commodity suppliers to becoming chocolate makers—custodians of their own traditions and beneficiaries of their own labour.

By contrast, under Fairtrade, only 5–8% of the final value remains with farmers, while the rest is captured by brands and retailers in wealthy countries. The contrast could not be starker.

Time to Rethink “Fair”

Fairtrade has become a comforting illusion. It allows consumers in the North to feel virtuous, while obscuring the reality of structural injustice. In doing so, it helps normalise— “socialise”—a colonial pattern of trade that keeps cacao farmers poor and dependent.

True fairness requires more than a logo (mark) on a wrapper. It demands a shift in power: away from corporations and certifiers in London or Amsterdam, and towards the farmers and communities who cultivate cacao. Supporting Tree to Bar enterprises is one way to take that step.

Next time you buy chocolate, ask yourself: do you want to reinforce a colonial trade pattern, or invest in a fairer future built at the source?

This Christmas, next year and every day, we need your voice and your power as consumers to help push for a truly just model.