fair trade

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a trading arrangement in which producers in developing countries receive a guaranteed minimum price for their goods — typically commodities such as coffee, cocoa, and bananas — along with an additional social premium for community investment, in exchange for meeting standards of environmental sustainability, labour rights, and democratic organisation; the fair trade movement challenges the conventional global commodity trade system in which price volatility and asymmetric bargaining power leave smallholder farmers with incomes insufficient to cover production costs; as a broader idiom, fair trade describes any exchange conducted on terms that are equitable and transparent rather than exploitative, invoking the moral dimension of economic transactions