Fairtrade News & Events

The global economic downturn made 2009 an incredibly tough year for the world’s poor seeking a fair deal for their produce, the Fairtrade Foundation will tell stakeholders at a evening reception today in London to mark the launch of Fairtrade Fortnight 2010 (22 February – 7 March 2010). The global economic turndown has been felt worst in developing countries, where an estimated 50-90 million more people were thrown into extreme poverty in 2009, according to UN Millennium Development Goal figures. Meanwhile, here in the UK, just over 7 in 10 people told YouGov that they cut back on their personal budgets in some way as a result of the recession, such as eating out less. Yet the UK public has remained staunchly loyal resulting in another increase in the value of Fairtrade sales, up on 2008 by 12% to an estimated retail value of over £799m, and 71% (who don’t already buy everything they can Fairtrade) of people say they are willing to swap one or more products to Fairtrade in the next two weeks, according to the new YouGov poll commissioned by the Foundation.