In 2007, farmers in Burkina Faso were not paid for over six months after they delivered their crop to the SOFITEX - the cotton company - who enjoys a purchasing monopoly in the country and is infamous for questionable practices pushing its operating costs up. If the drama around a farmer committing suicide by ingesting pesticides to escape debt has been popularized, issues that are of importance to the farmers are rarely cited in any advocacy pieces that claim to represent their interests. Indeed, in spite of numerous discussions of American and European subsidies on the livelihoods of West-African farmers since the 2005 WTO meeting in Hong-Kong, most citizens in North-America are incapable of recognizing a cotton plant on a big picture, let alone are they able to identify with the local situation in the fields.

Fair or Free trade, Burkina Faso may well fall to civil unrest lest its cotton farmers are able to make a living out of their crop. Free or Fair trade, they need to stop having to sell the fertilizers they get on credit to buy essential foodstuffs whose production they had forsaken in their struggle against a ever-more resilient evil: poverty. Fair or free trade, the producers are pleading for a change in their trade relationships. 

That change is possible. Citizens in their day-to-day purchasing decisions have the power to break the cycle, and turn their outfit into a political statement that rejects economic injustice made to developing nations.