Kirsten Nilsson's Blog Post

I come from a very small town in Vermont where Fair-trade products are in abundance. In small communities, customers stay loyal to their local farmers. Not just food products, art, furniture, textiles, jewelry, and clothing. It is more convenient to buy local goods than it is to travel out of the valley for a large selection of mass produced goods. So why not shop ethically in your own backyard, when its more convienent anyway? Moving to California was obviosuly a culture shock, a big difference is where Californian's buy their goods. Someone in Thousand Oaks goes to Ralphs and chooses from a variety of products, and someone in LA goes to Ralphs and chooses from the same selection. I am yet to find a good selection of fairtrade goods, a farmers market here and there, stands on the side of the road, but with a language barrier Im not to sure weather or not I am buying locally. Whole Foods does not equal fair trade, it is possible to find a few fair trade Items in there but most of thoes products have traveled hundreds of miles or more. Its apparent that finding these fair trade items is like a wild goose chase for me, so I rarely chase that goose. I don’t buy very many fairtrade products, mostly because of the convience.

Convience plays a huge role in a consumers mission, the shopper is looking for the most effiecnt way to get to the products they need. If supporting local farmers means driving even more than thirty minutes, forget it. A small percentage of people will make this journey when there is a perfectly “healthy” Whole Foods right down the road. With more information would consumers make this journey, just to make an ethical purchase? Dr Barnett said: "People actually seem very aware of these types of things, but often don't feel that they have the opportunities or resources to be able to buy Fairtrade products or ethically sourced goods. And it's not as simple as the consumer making a choice to buy an item that is ethically sound" I agree if it were more about making the decision to buy the Fair Trade products than we’d have a larger percent of people supporting local farmers. Its much more than this in most communities especially in citys, finding fair trade goods is like finding a needle in a hay stack.

Then why go to so much trouble to shop ethically? You want to live Ethically right. Just because it would be more convient to run over people on the cross walk to get where you are going faster, it doesn’t mean its ethical, therefor you probally wouldn't do that. Hitting pedestrains is “wrong”. So is buying products from strangers, from unknown regions, and supporting them, is wrong, when you could support your fellow countrymen and buy locally. It’s not just the ticket you can get for hitting a pedestrain or not yielding in a crosswalk, that keeps you from doing it, you don’t do it because it is not ethical. What is ethical though, is buying fair trade products, can society just do this because it is ethical, I think this has allready been proved as false. If fair trade had more perks/insentives more people would go that route. Not all perks are luxuries. Sometimes perks are the benefits your socity gets from acting in a certain way. Unfortuanatly these are not the insentives that people rush to resopond to.