Shoppers spent just shy of €5bn on Fairtrade goods last year – up 12% on the previous year. That was also the rate growth in the UK, which remains the biggest market for the ethical kitemark.

“Sales of Fairtrade certified products are taking off in new countries, as entirely new groups of people discover Fairtrade for the first time,” trilled Tuulia Syvaenen of Fairtrade International, pointing to markets like South Africa and South Korea.

She claimed the ethical standard was now “the norm for millions of people… part of the regular weekly shopping”. Sales were up across all the main categories – coca, coffee, bananas, sugar, tea and flowers.

Given their own travails, those numbers will be of only passing interest to Britain’s dairy farmers, who are increasingly calling for a Fairtrade-style scheme in the UK to ensure their businesses remain viable.

Judging by some of the comments left by readers on our website, there are certainly some shoppers who would be willing to pay a premium on milk if they knew the extra cash was helping British farmers. It’s also the subject of this week’s poll on thegrocer.co.uk.

Doubts remain over how such a scheme might work in practice – including how a ‘fair’ price might be defined and whether retailers would really buy into it. In Saturday’s edition of The Grocer, fresh foods editor Julia Glotz answered those key questions.

Either way, when you consider the radical alternatives being touted in other quarters – like culling dairy cows in order to crash milk volumes – the concept doesn’t seem far-fetched at all.

Topics