If you have a dollar to spend on beans and you can choose between buying locally grown beans at a farmers’ market or beans grown by a poor farmer in Kenya—even if the local farmer would get to keep the entire dollar and the Kenyan farmer would get only two cents from your dollar—you will do more to relieve poverty by buying the Kenyan beans.

I agree with No Impact Man’s reasoning, that the Kenyan farmer is better off receiving a whole dollar from us directly, so she can improve her farming practices and sell produce locally, thus receiving more than the 2c an exporter provides.