Brad:
I applaud your commitment to paying for improved quality, irrespective of formal certifications, which often return dubious value while guaranteeing increased costs of production.
I think a more beneficial way to think about pricing is to decouple it from commodity market and ask questions like, "Does the price paid reflect the true cost of production?", and"Does the price paid enable the grower/producer to support their family, sustain their farms, and strengthen their community?" Often, even double the market price is still not enough to answer yes to those questions.
The market price is not reflective of anything concrete. One the one hand, there is a forecast shortfall of 1 million metric tonnes in less than a decade. One bank expects, because of forecast record harvests in West Africa, for the price to be at $2300/MT this time next year and another expects it to be at $2700. In the meantime, the ICCO spot price has plummeted by nearly 30% (from over $3100/MT to under $2200/MT) since July. And that's the CIF price (delivered, customs, insurance, freight), not the price paid at the farm gate.
For everyone out there thinking about what's "fair" go to the grocery store and think about how shockingly cheap many bars of chocolate are. As long as that's the norm - and that's the expectation, then "Fair" trade isn't.
