The products we love are under threat – and so are producers’ livelihoods. The climate crisis is making it harder to grow everyday crops like cocoa and coffee. Farmers are dealing with unpredictable weather, failing harvests, and rising costs, often without the support they need.

Fairtrade enables farmers to invest in the land they rely on, improving soil and water quality, protecting biodiversity and forests, and building climate resilience. Fairtrade also works with businesses to strengthen environmental responsibility across supply chains. Protecting the planet means protecting the people who depend on it.

Learn more from Vijaya

No one should work in fear. Behind the products we use every day are people, farmers and workers, who deserve safe conditions, equal opportunities, and dignity at work. Children belong in school, not at work.

That’s why Fairtrade is campaigning for governments to demand better from business, so people’s rights are protected everywhere, not just where companies choose to act.

Meet Dora Atiiga: Cocoa Farmer, Teacher, Mother, and Changemaker

We’re all worried about money. Farmers and workers are no different. To feed their families, keep a roof over their heads, and plan for the future, farmers and workers need to earn enough, just like everyone else. But too often, the people behind our products are paid the least, while others take the profit.

Buying Fairtrade guarantees that producers are paid a decent wage or income. There are Fairtrade products for every budget, and every one helps shift the balance towards a fairer global economy.

Find out more from Rebecca

Christian Aid is an international organisation of more than 900 staff working to end poverty. They believe that local people in poor countries are the real experts on poverty. So they support more than 700 local organisations, because they’re best placed to understand the causes of poverty and how to fight it.

Fairtrade works with similar aims and in similar ways. It was therefore appropriate that Wycombe for Fairtrade’s chairman and treasurer attended the event that celebrated Christian Aid’s 80th anniversary.

Here I Stand
The Christian Aid Annual Lecture – with Mariana Mazzucato
St Martins in the Fields
Monday 6th October 2025. 7.00 – 8.30pm

Professor Mariana Mazzucato, a world-renowned economist, brings new vision to economics that can tackle global issues and confront international inequalities on our threatened planet.

She focused on 5 elements that needed to be addressed:

• Meaning and direction of the economy
• The objectives that need setting
• Knowledge sharing and working together at local, national, and international levels.
• Transparency and Accountability – Who owns what? Who benefits? How and Why?
• Economics for the Common Good, Inclusivity and collective action and more public – private partnerships to include giving marginalized people a voice.

There is an embedded video of the lecture below. It is about 60 minutes long with 30 minutes of questions and answers, some from the floor, but other questions from a former Chief Political and International BBC journalist.

Panel: Structures and Systems to achieve the SDGs: How should campaigners engage with their elected representatives to achieve systemic change?

Martin Rhodes, MP for Glasgow North and Chair of All Party Parliamentary Group on Fairtrade. Scottish Parliament.

• Write to you elected representatives.
• Make it personal.
• Gains further attention.
• Say something that is new/different.
• Provide different statistics that they can use.
• Build relationships, use shared interests.
• Look for alliances/partnerships that amplify your message.
• SDGs came out of grassroots campaigns, academia, politicians.
• You have to keep the message positive.
• With the growth of far right, it’s still important to contact your MP.
• Sustainability and fair trade are often not the most important issues. Make them.
• Get a diverse group together, better than an individual

Imogen Suett, Fairtrade Campaigner, Fairtrade Foundation, suggested:

• Help each other.ghf
• Build networks of people that support your cause.
• Key step is writing to your MP.
• Can you be a platform for your elected representatives agendas?
• Create a space locally – e.g. hold a Question-and-Answer session.
• Incorporate a broader issue like Social Justice than just Fairtrade.

Magdalena Śliwińska, Associate Professor, Poznań University of Economics and Business reported that:

• Poznan became the first economic Fairtrade university in Poland last year.
• Fair Trade  and sustainable business markets and models go together.
• Fair trade campaigners have advanced discussions about sustainability.
• Societies based upon sustainability and care meet the SDG goals.
• Fairtrade does this already.
• “Everything you make, make sense”.
• Universities are trend setters for these ideas.
• Help them to obtain their Fairtrade accreditation.

Sagwata Manyike, Senior Advisor: Economic Growth and Investment, South African Local Government Association, stated that:

• He advises other LGAs to help them become FT
• Draakenstein 1st self-declared Fairtrade Municipality.
• Repeat your message 7 times to your politician.
• Partnerships are key.
• “Come out of your silos”. 
• There are offices in each of the 9 states of South Africa.
• Connections with schools, colleges and universities vital.
• Young people and student are energetic and creative.

“What is the role of Fair Trade in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030?”

Frances Guy, Chief Executive, Scotland’s Nucleus Building International Development Alliance stated that:

• Fair trade is not marketing itself enough, particularly in relation to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
• We need to create a link between sustainable cities and Fairtrade Towns.
• 35% of SDG targets are not on track for 2030.
• We need to tell more personal stories of the Fairtrade producers.

Christina Sotomayor – Hope Jewellery & Crafts, Lima, Peru, reported that:

• Hope works with marginalised women, single mums, and young students.
• Hope works in the Lima shanty towns and other Andean towns.
• They provide flexible working opportunities for women.
• They work with Just Trade which sells their products in the UK.
• Hope works with partnerships across borders.
• For many women, it’s their first opportunity of a job.
• They create opportunities for women to upscale into leadership roles.
• They started in 2013 with just 13 women working for them and as of 2025, have 45 women.

Laura Cave – Just Trade (Jeweller and Storyteller) UK said that:

• She started as a jeweller and storyteller and not a campaigner. Went to Peru and fell in love with the country. Founded Just Trade due to a friendship she made in Peru. The company is based upon the 10 principles of Fairtrade. Just Trade is a member of the WFTO.
• Laura believes that you should campaign by doing things well and not just focus on the issue.
• They work with Hope, a woman’s artisan project in Peru. Hope created a cat toy based upon Hodge, a rescue cat at Southwark Cathedral, that had 25,000 followers on Instagram. From that they now have developed a whole range of products around Hodge. It combines humour with poverty alleviation, something people can relate to.
• They’re now working with a high street retailer who are interested in their quality products and not just because they’re fairly-traded.

Sophie Tack – President of the World Fair Trade Association specified that:

• The WFTO had 300 registered Small and Medium Sized Enterprise.
• This covered food to fashion, tourism and cosmetics.
• WFTO adopted a “holistic” approach going far beyond profit
• People and planet before profit.
• The Free Market system is broken and ladened with inequalities and environmental degradation.
• The WFTO fully adheres to its 10 major principles based on the UN SDGs.
• The WFTO is about transformation of the whole supply chain.
• It promotes fair prices, wages, democratic decision making, gender equality, human rights, dignity, and political courage.
• They seek to challenge the status quo, revolutionize business practices, and promote social responsibility and environmental sustainability.
• A “systemic transformation” of the trade is required.
• Support comes from the EU Advocacy Office.
• Change requires local, national, and international government backing.

First Panel Question: “What are the key challenges facing the movement right now?”

Bernard Outah, Regional Director of the World Fair Trade Organization – Africa, talked about:

• Being a fair trade country was not a badge but a call to action.
• There was a gap between produc¹ers and sellers.
• We must change global trade rules that are unfair.
• We need to see the movement grow in the South as there aren’t
  many fair trade countries in the Global South.
• We should build on connections between north and south (which
  is exactly what was happening at the conference).

Emihle Mbuli, Young WFTO Africa Advocate, commented that:

• The youth is the base of the future.
• The youth is the bridge.
• The youth are caged due to inequalities and are looking for opportunities to make a difference.
• Fair trade can reduce youth unemployment and gender inequalities.

Elena Fernandez-Lee, Education Campaigning Manager, UK Fairtrade
Foundation, spoke about:

• There is a gap between youth in schools and universities with their communities.
• Young people tend not to trust institutions.
• The young people are instinctive digital campaigners.
• We need to learn how to campaign with youth.
• We have to appreciate that young people obtain their information
• in different ways.
• Currently the far right dominates traditional communication
• methods. The young people don’t listen to those platforms.
• Now, only 30% of the UK population thinks that democracy works.
• Only 8% of population think that individual action works.

Milan Bhattarai, Director, Get Paper Industry, Nepal, stated that:

• Get Paper was a handmade paper manufacturer who started 30 years ago.
• They only use recycled paper and will not cut down trees to make it.
• Currently every tonne of paper comes from 17 trees being cut down.
• Every tonne of paper that Get Paper Industry exports they plant 17 trees.
• They train people in how to make paper, decorative boxes, as well as skills in leadership, especially women.

Luis Heller, Administration Manager, Allpa & Board Member, and WFTO
Latin America, reported that:

• Fairtrade has to integrate communities to change the trade
  situation.
• We need to challenge human rights abuses and advocate for
  fairer economic systems.
• We should break the ice between Global North & South
  disparities.
• Participation of all people in the process is very important.

This was an amazing conference held for the first time on the African continent. 

It was well organized and managed, with many dynamic, positive, and encouraging addresses, presentations, panel discussions, and workshops.

It is a testimony as to what can be achieved  by emphasizing fairness, inclusivity, sustainability, with transformational social policies at the local, municipal, provincial and broader state level.

For more detail of the event, go to https://www.foodformzansi.co.za/drakenstein-leads-africas-fair-trade-movement-at-landmark-event/ This article has a very concise analysis in English on the South African Agriculture website and the Neumarkt website in Bavaria, which is the partnership town of Drakestein.