Take 5 from 2020:
Highlights from the Fairtrade Foundation's annual report

• Over the year, many stories came in from our networks about farming groups adapting how they spend their Fairtrade Premium to support their communities. That includes Colombian banana farmers teaming up with the local fire department to sanitise the streets, and flower workers in Kenya learning tailoring skills to make facemasks. Meanwhile, coffee farmers in Peru used some of their money to supply food packages to vulnerable members of their community.

In Latin America, 65 percent of the money received through Fairtrade International's global Fairtrade Producer Relief and Resilience fund went to coffee farmers who face the burden of climate change challenges alongside those of the pandemic.

Fairtrade Standards were temporarily revised in March to allow for more flexibility in the use of Fairtrade Premium funds. And so Oserian Development Company Ltd, a Fairtrade certified flower producer in Naivasha, Kenya, chose to begin manufacturing masks for its workers, their families and members of the community. 22 of the 36 tailors working in the farm’s social hall are employees at the farm who developed tailoring skills through short courses funded by Fairtrade Premium. Now their high-quality masks meet the Ministry of Health’s standards.  

• In 2020, Fairtrade International launched the global Fairtrade Producer Relief and Resilience Fund – a pot of nearly £14 million for Covid-hit Fairtrade farmers and workers around the world to protect their families and communities. From medical expenses and nutrition to keeping businesses afloat and replacing lost earnings, the fund provided hope in dark times.

On top of this, the Fairtrade Foundation mobilised commercial and government funding to support producers. That included cotton farmers in India, cocoa farmers in Ghana and farmers in Latin America. Find out how farming communities across the world responded to the pandemic in the video below.

First section image: a farmer sanitising streets, Chile
Second section image: producers receiving food supply packages provided by the CLAC-Fairtrade relief fund, Guatemala

• Fairtrade flower sales started 2020 well after strong growth the previous year. With the onset of the pandemic, consumer habits changed, orders dropped and exports fell. But 2020 saw the rise of the online flower shop as shopping habits moved further online.

UK shoppers bought almost 94 million Fairtrade stems over the year, just five percent below 2019.

That was better than the market overall, which saw a six percent drop. Sales saw £700,000 in Fairtrade Premium go to workers.

• Over 17,000 flower workers across 25 farms benefited from the flexible use of the Fairtrade Premium, with more than £445,000 distributed by worker committees to support colleagues to buy food and health equipment, and help cushion the reduced wages during a critical time.

First section image: flower worker packing flowers, Bigot Flowers, Kenya

• Despite Covid-19 severely disrupting our usual supporter activities up and down the UK, there were strong highlights in 2020. Fairtrade Fortnight, our annual headline event, mobilised supporter audiences behind the ‘She Deserves Fairtrade’ campaign, focusing on women farmers. Our online supporter following grew by more than 2,000 people. There were almost 2,000 pieces of media coverage. Our video reach was 2 million, up from 1.7 million in 2019. Social followers increased by 14,000 over the course of 2020. Website visits increased by 40,000 over the year to 907,000 visits.

• As educational resources pivoted from the classroom to the home, our engagement with young people soared. For example, from April to June 2020, we saw an incredible 3,600 percent increase in resource downloads on the same period in 2019, as teachers and families supported pupils.

• In 2020, we gave the Fairtrade brand a refresh. Choose the World You Want celebrates the positive impact of choosing Fairtrade as it ripples out far and wide to create the world we all want to see. With vibrant visual assets and an upbeat tone, we have seen deeper engagement with our brand, which highlights key areas where Fairtrade can make a difference, including tackling climate change.

•  Despite the challenges the Out of Home sector has experienced throughout the pandemic, our relationship with Greggs blossomed. In the last 12 months, the retailer celebrated 15 years of Fairtrade, and converted to Fairtrade-sourced cocoa in their chocolate couverture. 

• In 2020, Amazon launched the Climate Pledge Friendly badge – a new programme to make it easy for customers to discover and shop for more sustainable products, and Fairtrade was one of the launch partners. Customers will now see the Climate Pledge Friendly badge on more than 40,000 products to show that they have one or more of 19 different sustainability certifications, including Fairtrade.

• Fairtrade’s work with Co-op continued apace. The retailer grew their own-label Fairtrade range and launched FSI Cocoa Labelling . They also worked to make Fairtrade products more visible in store. The supermarket expanded and revamped their Fairtrade coffee range, introducing 13 new lines. In 2020, Co-op also developed a bold new strategy setting out their objective to become the UK’s biggest supporter of Fairtrade. Over the year, the volume of Fairtrade ingredients used in Co-op’s own-label products amounted to 53,617 tonnes, 14.1 million litres of wine and 41.4 million cut flower stems.

• Waitrose & Partners finalised the roll-out of their commitment to 100 percent Fairtrade cocoa across all Waitrose and John Lewis confectionery lines in 2020. That saw the launch of over 50 new Fairtrade Sourced Ingredient cocoa products.

• M&S introduced nine new own-label Fairtrade wine lines in 2020, and saw a 20 percent growth in Fairtrade wine volumes on 2019. Sales generated over £50,000 for wine producers in Fairtrade Premium.

• Ocado launched the UK’s first-ever Fairtrade aisle, stocking exclusively Fairtrade products across a huge range of categories from bananas and ice cream to spreads and coffee. This included their own 100 percent Fairtrade banana range with volumes doubling from 2019 to 2020. 

• Sainsbury’s continued to be the UK’s leading seller of Fairtrade products over the year, and the global leader in Fairtrade banana sales. In 2020, Fairtrade Premium from banana sales totalled over £4.5m for thousands of farmers and workers.

• In November 2020, Ben & Jerry’s committed to paying farmers an even higher price for their cocoa. This equates to more than $600,000 a year in additional income to 5,000 cocoa farmers. This sum is on top of the annual Fairtrade Premium and above the Côte d’Ivoire government’s minimum price for cocoa. The extra money will help accelerate farmers’ progress towards living incomes, provide added stability in the midst of a global pandemic, and demonstrates a business committed to action.