 Economists assert that, as the demand for coffee, in particular, is highly inelastic, so an increased price for Fairtrade which produces a small increase in supply means a large fall in market price.In addition, the Fairtrade minimum price means that when the world market price collapses, it is the non-Fairtrade farmers, and particularly the poorest, who have to cut down their coffee trees.This argument is often illustrated with the example of Vietnam paying its coffee farmers over the world price in the 1980s, planting lots of coffee, then flooding the world market in the 1990s.