As thousands of people get behind Fairtrade Fortnight 2016 (Feb 29th– Mar 13th), positive volume growth in Fairtrade gold as well as in four out of the five main Fairtrade food categories all sent a strong signal that shoppers and businesses are still standing up for Fairtrade, despite the tough market.
Fairtrade mining co-operatives in Latin American sold 170Kg Fairtrade gold to the global market, generating a Fairtrade Premium of US$340,000 on top of the selling price to invest in community projects.
Although still quite small overall, estimated sales volumes of Fairtrade fine gold grewby a dramatic 440% in the UK in 2015. Meanwhile the number of registered goldsmiths using Fairtrade gold across 11 markets increased to 389, 142 of which are UK based.
CEO of the Fairtrade Foundation Michael Gidney, said:
“These figures show that British shoppers remain committed to Fairtrade. That’s good news for those businesses offering Fairtrade products. We’re delighted to see increases in most of the categories for which Fairtrade is best known – this means more producers are getting a better deal for the food they grow for us”.
For 2016, the Fairtrade Foundation remains cautiously optimistic, with recent announcements by a range of businesses to extending their commitments to buying on Fairtrade terms. Further business commitments are expected to be made later in the year.
The Fairtrade Foundation’s annual national campaign Fairtrade Fortnight kicks off on 29 February – 13 March, with the call to action “Make Your Breakfast Count” which highlights the continued levels of food insecurity experienced by millions of farmers, workers and around the world.
Karen Quille, Assistant to the Managers at Sotrami said, “If we had more Fairtrade sales, we could make further improvements. We’d like to invest in a mother’s club and a women’s committee. We’d also like to study to improve our technical skills which would be useful to our work.”
Santiago Ramirez Castro from MACDESA said, “We’d like to invest in x-ray equipment and surgical material. We need it urgently; it would help us diagnose many diseases not only in the mine, but in the community, the district, even the region, as the nearest city where you can have an x-ray is 300 km away.”
The Fortnight will see thousands of activities in local communities, shops, cafés, workplaces, schools and faith networks, whilst farmer representatives from Colombia, India and Kenya will be touring the UK meeting local businesses and members of the public, highlighting the impact of Fairtrade in their communities as well as the challenges they continue to face.
Rising to the challenges of the future, the Fairtrade Foundation’s new 2016-20 Strategy ‘Changing Trade, Changing Lives – Fairtrade Can, I Can’ will also be launched during the Fortnight. The strategy includes an ambition to drive transformative change in five focus commodity sectors on issues such as improving income and delivery of living wages, as well as innovate together with businesses to deliver deeper impact through new partnership and programme approaches.