Is Fairtrade Actually “Fair”?

Is Fairtrade actually fair? On the whole, yes: independent studies show that certified farmers earn better prices and higher incomes, even though Fairtrade does not solve every problem. That matters, because Fairtrade sets out to change the terms of trade itself, not just to put a label on a product. In gold, the model works especially directly: a price tied to the world market, a premium the miners control and labeled gold that is traceable to the mine.

Key insights

• Is Fairtrade actually fair? Mostly yes, measured against the status quo. A meta-analysis of 97 studies finds 20–30 % higher prices and 16–22 % higher household incomes for farmers certified under sustainability standards such as Fairtrade.
• Fairtrade works best for organized producers. Minimum price, premium and democratic organization strengthen cooperatives. Hired farm workers benefit far less, and much certified produce is still sold outside Fairtrade terms.
• Fairtrade Gold is the model's strongest case. Miners receive at least 95 % of the LBMA gold price plus 2,000 US dollars per kilogram, and gold with the FAIRTRADE Gold Mark must be physically traceable from the mine.
• Demand is the bottleneck. In 2024, only 1,284 of 2,687 kilograms of certified gold were sold on Fairtrade terms. The more buyers ask for Fairtrade Gold, the more of it can do its job.

Is Fairtrade actually fair? The short answer

On the whole, yes. Fairtrade does not create perfect conditions overnight, and it does not claim to. Its aim is to make trade fairer than it would otherwise be. On that measure, the evidence is on its side.

A meta-analysis of 97 studies by the agricultural economist Eva-Marie Meemken found that farmers certified under sustainability standards such as Fairtrade or Organic receive 20–30 % higher prices than comparable farmers without certification. Their household incomes are 16–22 % higher.¹ The economists Raluca Dragusanu, Daniele Giovannucci and Nathan Nunn, who reviewed the research on Fair Trade, reached a similar verdict: Fair Trade “does achieve many of its intended goals, although on a comparatively modest scale relative to the size of national economies.”²

So is Fairtrade good? It is not a miracle, but it is a measurable improvement on the status quo. The rest of this article shows where that improvement comes from, where it stops and why gold is Fairtrade's strongest case.

What “fair” means in Fairtrade

In Fairtrade, “fair” is not a feeling but a set of rules. Fairtrade International writes the standards, the independent certifier FLOCERT checks them, and products that meet them may carry the FAIRTRADE Mark. Four tools do the work:

• Fairtrade Minimum Price: a floor that “aims to cover the average costs of sustainably producing” a crop. When the market price is higher, producers get the market price.³
• Fairtrade Premium: “an extra sum of money (paid on top of the selling price)” that producers invest in projects of their choice.³ In 2024, it came to 201.6 million euros.⁴
• Fairtrade Standards: requirements that producers and the companies buying from them must meet, from working conditions to democratic organization.³
• Independent audits: FLOCERT audits producers and traders on site, holds confidential interviews with workers and members and may also carry out unannounced audits.⁵

Behind these tools sits Fairtrade's theory of change. It maps five pathways, from economic gains and stronger producer organizations to fair, sustainable choices in the market. Fairtrade is candid about its reach: it “contributes to these goals but cannot be solely accountable for achieving them.”⁶ Who does what in the system is covered in the Fairtrade system explained.

Does Fairtrade actually work? What studies show

Does Fairtrade actually work? For organized producers, yes – most clearly in prices and in stronger cooperatives. A systematic review of 179 studies, led by Carlos Oya of SOAS University of London, found higher prices for certified farmers.⁷ Meemken's meta-analysis confirms it and adds a key insight: context-specific factors such as the organization of supply chains play a decisive role.¹

Some of the most lasting effects go beyond income. A carefully matched study of coffee farmers in Peru found “only modest direct income and production effects, but significant changes in organization, input use, wealth and assets, and risk attitudes.”⁸ Strong cooperatives can negotiate, invest and reach markets that no single farmer could reach alone.

People employed by cooperatives gain, too. A study of cocoa in Côte d'Ivoire, published in Nature Sustainability, concluded: “Fairtrade improves wages and reduces poverty among cooperative workers.”⁹ The same study also points to the model's weakest spot.

Where Fairtrade falls short

Fairtrade's weakest point is hired labor on farms. The Côte d'Ivoire study found no such gains “among farm workers, even though the latter are particularly deprived.”⁹

A research team from SOAS was “unable to find any evidence that Fairtrade has made a positive difference to the wages and working conditions” of workers in its study areas in Ethiopia and Uganda.¹⁰ Oya's review, too, finds that “workers' wages do not seem to benefit” from certification.⁷

The second problem is demand. Producers can only sell part of their certified harvest on Fairtrade terms. In 2024, that share was around 27 % for coffee and 47 % for cocoa.¹¹ The rest is sold outside Fairtrade, without its minimum price and premium. Counting that unsold certified output, economists Alain de Janvry, Craig McIntosh and Elisabeth Sadoulet found that “expected producer benefits are close to 0” in an association of coffee cooperatives in Central America.¹²

Critics also point out that little of the extra money consumers pay reaches farmers. For coffee, economist Helene Naegele estimated that “the coffee farmer receives about a fifth of the price premium paid by the consumer.”¹³ Fairtrade's reply: retail prices are “determined entirely by the retailer”; what Fairtrade guarantees is the price and premium paid to producers.¹⁴

None of this means Fairtrade fails. It shows where the model has to grow, and why it fits some products better than others.

Is Fairtrade Gold actually fair?

Of all Fairtrade products, gold may be the strongest case for the model. The research above shows that Fairtrade works best where producers are organized and where certified goods find buyers on Fairtrade terms. Fairtrade certifies gold only from organizations of artisanal and small-scale miners.¹⁵

That is where most people in gold mining work: small-scale mining provides around 90 % of all jobs in gold mining but only 15–20 % of the gold.¹⁶ Our overview of artisanal and small-scale gold mining describes the sector in detail.

A price miners can count on

In gold, the minimum price is tied to the world market. Buyers pay at least 95 % of the LBMA gold price, the international benchmark set in London, for the pure gold content at the export point.¹⁵ For washed Arabica coffee, by contrast, the Fairtrade Minimum Price is a fixed 1.80 US dollars per pound.¹⁷ The gold price floor moves with the market, so it always keeps pace.

That matters, because small-scale miners often sell far below the benchmark. In Burkina Faso, miners selling small amounts at the mine site receive 85–87 % of the LBMA price, while exporters in the same country get 97 %, a planetGOLD study found.¹⁸ On a metal this valuable, every percentage point counts.

At Fairever, we go further. We voluntarily pay the mines 96–99 % of the LBMA gold price instead of the required 95 %.¹⁹

A premium the miners control

On top of the price, miners receive a Fairtrade Premium of 2,000 US dollars per kilogram of gold, paid in full to their organization.¹⁵ An elected premium committee, representative of all groups of miners and workers “in number and gender,” draws up a development plan, and the general assembly approves it. The money sits in a separate bank account that needs one signature from the committee and one from the mining organization.¹⁵

In absolute terms, the premium adds up. At CECOMSAP, an umbrella organization of ten mining cooperatives in Ananea, Peru, gold sales in Switzerland alone paid 1.3 million Swiss francs in Fairtrade Premium in 2021.²⁰ The cooperatives have spent it on protective clothing, a dining hall for miners, water treatment and computers for schools, and on vibrating tables that replaced mercury.²⁰²¹²² The full story is in our profile of the CECOMSAP gold mine in Peru.

For a single ring, the amount is modest: an 8-gram wedding ring in 18-karat gold contains 6 grams of fine gold and carries 12 US dollars in Fairtrade Premium.²³ Across a mine's output, it funds projects that no single miner could pay for.

No mixing, no mass balance

Gold with the FAIRTRADE Gold Mark must be physically traceable from the mine to the finished product. It stays separate from non-certified gold at every step, and every company that handles it on its way to a labeled product must be certified.¹⁵ That sets gold apart from cocoa, tea, fruit juices and sugar. For these, Fairtrade allows mass balance: companies “may mix Fairtrade and non-Fairtrade amounts” as long as the volumes sold on Fairtrade terms are tracked and audited.²⁴

Physical traceability answers one of the most common doubts about Fairtrade: does the product really come from a certified producer? For labeled Fairtrade Gold, it does. We go one step further and name the source mine and its FLO ID, the mine's Fairtrade identification number, on every Fairever label.¹⁹ Our article on what Fairtrade Gold is follows the gold from mine to market.

Rules that grow with the mine

The Fairtrade Gold Standard does not demand perfection on day one – it sets deadlines. Some requirements apply from the first audit, others after one, three or six years, and development requirements measure progress over time.¹⁵ Two areas show how this works in practice:

• Workers: All workers have the right to join a trade union from the first audit. Organizations and members with more than 20 workers must pay at least the regional average or the official minimum wage, whichever is higher, and raise wages regularly, with a living wage as the goal.¹⁵
• Mercury: From the third year of certification, mines must not use mercury wherever gold can be recovered without it commercially and technically.¹⁵ At CECOMSAP, all ten cooperatives have recovered their gold without mercury since 2023, on gravity-based vibrating tables.¹⁹ Peru still has no legal ban on mercury in small-scale mining.²⁵ The push came from the standard.

From July 2027, a revised standard takes over. It brings family and individual mining businesses into scope and strengthens health and safety and the phase-out of mercury.²⁶ The rules in detail: the Fairtrade Gold Standard.

The honest limits

Fairtrade Gold is still rare. In 2024, 1,284 kilograms were sold on Fairtrade terms, around 0.035 % of the gold mined worldwide that year.⁴²⁷ That was less than half of what certified mines produced: 2,687 kilograms, of which 48 % found a Fairtrade buyer. In 2023, the share was 99 %.⁴²⁸²⁹ With lower sales, the premium paid to miners fell from 3.13 million euros in 2023 to 2.37 million euros in 2024.⁴²⁸

The bottleneck is demand, not supply. Certified mines can deliver more gold than buyers currently take. Every additional kilogram sold on Fairtrade terms earns its miners the full Fairtrade price and premium.

Two further limits deserve mention. Fairtrade reaches organized mining groups rather than the most marginalized miners, as the researcher Eleanor Fisher noted when Fairtrade extended its gold program to East Africa.³⁰ The revised standard's opening to family businesses is a step toward reaching more of them.

We know of no independent study that has measured the impact of Fairtrade Gold in numbers. What we know comes from the standard, the audits and the documented premium projects at mines such as CECOMSAP.

FAQs: Is Fairtrade actually “fair”?

Key takeaways

In a nutshell ...

• Is Fairtrade actually fair? On the whole, yes. It does not deliver perfect conditions, but studies show better prices, higher incomes and stronger cooperatives compared with conventional trade.
• Fairtrade is only as strong as its buyers. Certified goods that find no Fairtrade buyer earn no Fairtrade price, and hired farm workers still gain too little.
• In gold, the mechanism works especially directly. The minimum price is tied to the LBMA gold price, the miners' committee controls the premium, and gold with the FAIRTRADE Gold Mark is physically traceable to the mine.
• Every kilogram sold on Fairtrade terms counts. Certified mines produced twice as much gold in 2024 as buyers took on Fairtrade terms. Ask your supplier for Fairtrade Gold – and for the mine behind it.

Get active, be the change!

Certified mines are ready to sell more Fairtrade Gold. If your next collection or investment should pay miners at least 95 % of the gold price plus the Fairtrade Premium, take a look at our Fairtrade Gold products – from casting grain and sheet to gold bars.

Further reading

• How Fairtrade connects to the global development agenda: Fairtrade and the Sustainable Development Goals.
• Everything about the certified metal itself: what is Fairtrade Gold?
• A Fairtrade-certified mine at 4,700 meters: the CECOMSAP gold mine in Peru.

Sources

1. Eva-Marie Meemken, Do smallholder farmers benefit from sustainability standards? A systematic review and meta-analysis, Global Food Security 26, 100373, 2020. ↩ ↩
2. Raluca Dragusanu, Daniele Giovannucci and Nathan Nunn, The Economics of Fair Trade, NBER Working Paper 20357, 2014. We quote the working paper; the article was later published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives 28(3), 2014. ↩
3. Fairtrade International, FAQ, accessed September 2026. ↩ ↩ ↩
4. Fairtrade International, Monitoring the Scope and Benefits of Fairtrade, 17th edition, 2026 (data for 2024), pp. 13, 15 and 18. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
5. FLOCERT, How to join Fairtrade, accessed September 2026. ↩
6. Fairtrade International, Theory of Change, accessed September 2026. ↩
7. Carlos Oya, Florian Schaefer and Dafni Skalidou, The effectiveness of agricultural certification in developing countries: A systematic review, World Development 112, 2018, pp. 282–312. ↩ ↩
8. Ruerd Ruben and Ricardo Fort, The Impact of Fair Trade Certification for Coffee Farmers in Peru, World Development 40(3), 2012, pp. 570–582. ↩
9. Eva-Marie Meemken, Jorge Sellare, Christophe N. Kouame and Matin Qaim, Effects of Fairtrade on the livelihoods of poor rural workers, Nature Sustainability 2, 2019. ↩ ↩
10. Christopher Cramer, Deborah Johnston, Carlos Oya and John Sender, Fairtrade, Employment and Poverty Reduction in Ethiopia and Uganda, final report, SOAS University of London, May 2014, p. 15. ↩
11. Our own calculation from the monitoring report for 2024 (footnote 4): coffee 142,413 tonnes sold on Fairtrade terms ÷ 525,547 tonnes of certified production × 100 ≈ 27 %; cocoa 334,529 tonnes ÷ 707,552 tonnes × 100 ≈ 47 %. ↩
12. Alain de Janvry, Craig McIntosh and Elisabeth Sadoulet, Fair Trade and Free Entry: Can a Disequilibrium Market Serve as a Development Tool?, Review of Economics and Statistics 97(3), 2015, pp. 567–573. ↩
13. Helene Naegele, Where Does the Fairtrade Money Go? How Much Consumers Pay Extra for Fairtrade Coffee and How This Value Is Split along the Value Chain, DIW Berlin Discussion Paper 1783, 2019. ↩
14. Fairtrade America, 5 things people get wrong about Fairtrade, August 26, 2016. ↩
15. Fairtrade International, Fairtrade Standard for Gold and Associated Precious Metals for Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining, version 1.2, November 2013 (in force until June 30, 2027), introduction, chapter 2 (scope) and requirements 2.1.7, 2.1.8, 3.2.1, 3.3.22, 3.3.27, 3.3.40, 4.1.1, 4.1.3, 4.1.4, 4.1.10, 4.5.1, 4.5.3 and 4.5.5. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
16. IGF / IISD, Global Trends in Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM), 2018, p. 3; World Gold Council, Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining, accessed September 2026. ↩
17. Fairtrade International, Fairtrade Minimum Price and Premium Table, version of September 24, 2025. ↩
18. planetGOLD / The Impact Facility, Overcoming Practical Barriers for Integrating Responsible Artisanal & Small-Scale Mined Gold into International Supply Chains, September 2022, p. 31. ↩
19. Fairever, internal information, September 2026. ↩ ↩ ↩
20. Hildegard Willer, Faires Gold für die „Bärreli“, Welt-Sichten, August 26, 2022. ↩ ↩
21. Patrick Steinemann, Fairtrade Gold: Fairness, die allen dient, magazine “ZH” 3/2022, Zürcher Kantonalbank. ↩
22. Fairtrade International, The gold mining organisation Halcon de Oro, accessed September 2026. ↩
23. Our own calculation: a ring of 8 grams in 18-karat (750) gold contains 8 × 0.75 = 6 grams of fine gold; 6 grams × 2,000 US dollars per kilogram ÷ 1,000 = 12 US dollars. ↩
24. Fairtrade International, Traceability in Fairtrade supply chains, accessed September 2026. ↩
25. Congress of the Republic of Peru, Aprueban dictamen que establece marco normativo para eliminar progresivamente uso de mercurio en la minería artesanal, March 17, 2026. ↩
26. Fairtrade International, Announcement: Revised Fairtrade Standard for Gold and Associated Precious Metals, June 25, 2026. ↩
27. Our own calculation: 1,284 kg (footnote 4) ÷ 3,661,000 kg of global mine production in 2024 (World Gold Council, Gold Demand Trends Full Year 2024: Supply, 2025) × 100 ≈ 0.035 %. The year of sale and the year of mining do not always match. ↩
28. Fairtrade International, Monitoring the Scope and Benefits of Fairtrade, 16th edition, 2025 (data for 2023), pp. 13, 15 and 18. ↩ ↩
29. Our own calculation: 2024: 1,284 kg sold on Fairtrade terms ÷ 2,687 kg of certified production × 100 ≈ 48 % (footnote 4); 2023: 1,646 kg ÷ 1,668 kg × 100 ≈ 99 % (footnote 28). ↩
30. Eleanor Fisher, Solidarities at a distance: Extending Fairtrade gold to east Africa, The Extractive Industries and Society 5(1), January 2018. ↩