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The main objective of this research was to provide an exploratory analysis of the Fairtrade producer organisations' network, focusing mainly on the revenues that certified organisations derive from their participation in Fairtrade. Using descriptive statistics and regression techniques, we analysed the Fairtrade affiliated organisations from the comprehensive dataset on worldwide Fairtrade certified producers. The database comprises 1016 producer organisations and plantations, distributed in 65 developing countries during 2015 including all products and countries. We identified some features of farmer organisations that affect the creation of revenues, and we investigated the fraction of revenues that producer organizations derive from FT compared to their overall revenues. The results highlight the different approaches to FT by the certified organisations and do not reveal any dominance in terms of revenues by any type of producer organisations or by organisations involved in FT for the longest time. This research contributes to deepening the knowledge about Fairtrade operations and provide useful information to the debate on the role of Fairtrade in developing profitable value chains for producer organisations in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decades global sugar production and consumption have grown and the forecasts predict further increases in the coming years. Today 80% of the sugar in the world is produced from sugar cane, while only 20% is produced from sugar beet. Sugar cane production is mainly limited to tropical or sub-tropical areas, which production has always been linked to incidents of child labor, exploitation of workers, precarious working conditions and health problems for farmers. This paper provides a representation of the global sugar market, presenting the main players and the most evident trends, focusing on the network of Fairtrade (FT) certified producer organizations. The analysis uses data on sugar cane producers available in the literature (USDA, OECD, FAO) and data collected by the Monitory, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) program, which were provided by Fairtrade International. The database was analyzed using descriptive statistics techniques and two-step cluster analysis. The results identified four cluster that highlights recurring patterns and similarities of different indicators between producers' organizations in terms of their geographical location, productivity, type of cultivation, size of the organization and involvement in FT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]