Maybe the problem is that fair trade or to start off with any trade, isn't a one way street. We feel a need for foods that can't be grown in our own backyards so we empower people to go out and get it for us. Naturally they try to buy cheap, and sell dear as Cricket Tragic points out. At the same time our subsidized basic foods like grains and oilseeds need a market. The people we empower in this case, the multinational grain companies, have it in their interests to move as much grain as possible because they make their money by volume.
Part of our subsidization of agriculture has been the usage of high levels of chemical fertilizers and pesticides allowed by cheap gas and oil. this has permitted the production of grain at nominally lower values than third world country farmers can grow it at. The grain companies sell this "cheaper" grain into undeveloped countries. The results being that farmers there are forced out of business. Some, with the wherewithall to adapt, change production to meet the demands for goods from the wealthier nations.
They then have to deal with our purchasers. Hopefully some of them run into fair trade workers who actually live up to their agreements with both sides. What often happens is that food giants like Dole, buy the land for a song and hire the locals for another song, and sell the produce to us for a high price.
An avoidance of this whole cycle of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer would be to recognize that we shouldn't be subsidizing agriculture but we should be paying what it's worth to grow food.
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