It's the new black - or rather, the new blue, green and black. Fairtrade, with its funky but strangely impenetrable logo, has become fashionable. From chocolate, coffee, vanilla pods and cakes to cut flowers, cotton sheets and even sports balls, its products are flying off the shelf quicker than you can say Live 8. Sales are rising by 50 per cent each year and now total £140m in Britain and $1bn across the developed world. Each day, we in the UK brew three million cups of Fairtrade hot drinks and munch our way through half a million certified bananas; at the Co-op, all the own-brand coffee and chocolate carries the Fairtrade mark, as do three-quarters of the roses at Sainsbury's. At Waitrose, all the Caribbean bananas are Fairtrade. On the high street, outlets from Marks & Spencer cafés and ATM coffee bars to Slug and Lettuce pubs serve only Fairtrade tea and coffee. In January, Sainsbury's pledged to become the UK's main Fairtrade supermarket, accounting for one-third of all sales made through major retailers.
What's more, this revolution of consciousness has occurred only in the past two years. In 2003, there were just 150 Fairtrade products available in the UK. Now there are 1,300, promoted by celebrities including Chris Martin of Coldplay, the comedian Harry Hill and the newsreader George Alaghia - patron of the Fairtrade Foundation. To coincide with Fairtrade Fortnight (6-19 March), 20 famous faces will feature in an exhibition of portraits by the photographer Trevor Leighton. Jemma Kidd appears with her face covered in jam, Charlie Dimmock has a pair of mangoes down her vest (as if we didn't know) and Lenny Henry does something amusing with Brazil nuts. It's designed to express their fervour for Fairtrade products and urge the public to 'Make Fairtrade Your Habit' instead of an occasional purchase, echoing Make Poverty History and capitalising on the post-G8 mood. Given that Fairtrade has probably reached all the ethical consumers it can, it's also a pragmatic move. Unless it can break out of its niche, the only way forward is to grow the market by urging existing customers to buy more.
In terms of awareness of its cause, the foundation may also have reached a watershed. Last year it was voted 'best of the superbrands' in a poll to mark the launch of the Superbrands 2005 handbook - beating AOL, BT and The Times as the one that has excelled in its field. In 2005, too, a MORI poll found that 50 per cent of adults now recognise the Fairtrade mark - up from 25 per cent in 2003.
As I read about all this, I try to visualise the Fairtrade mark. I vaguely recall it is green and blue, in a shape that could imply a coffee bean, a yin-and-yang symbol or a tennis ball. When I cheat and look at my sheaf of promotional literature, I still can't make out what it is. Only when I ask do I learn that it is a black figure waving against a background of grass and sky. In a way, my struggle to understand demonstrates the paradox of Fairtrade: while growing numbers recognise the mark, bandy the term about and buy the products occasionally, few can say how Fairtrade began or what it really means.
Most people think it is a British institution - but in fact it is based in Bonn, Germany, where Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International (FLO) presides over 20 certifying bodies in Europe, North America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand - including the London-based Fairtrade Foundation. Of the 20 consumer countries involved, Britain now buys the most Fairtrade products. The labelling system was created in the Netherlands in the late 1980s, when Max Havelaar launched the first food product with an ethical guarantee - coffee from Mexico. In 1994, the first British Fairtrade product was launched: Maya Gold chocolate from Green & Black's, made with organic cocoa from a co-operative in Belize.
By 2004 the Fairtrade range included flowers and footballs, and last year, the world's first ethical coconut went on sale at Sainsbury's. All are sold for a few pence more than their non-Fairtrade counterparts, guaranteeing a fair return for farmers. They are paid a fixed amount for their crop, regardless of the fluctuating world market price - something unique to Fairtrade - and a 'social premium' to be reinvested in communities, safeguarding their future. Food manufacturers, not the farmers, pay Fairtrade a fee for use of the mark on a product's packaging.
In the same decade that Fairtrade flourished, there was an explosion of other ethical labels: Soil Association, Lion Quality, Marine Stewardship Council, Freedom Foods, Leaf and Little Red Tractor. In the developing world, Rainforest Alliance, Utz Kapeh and others claimed they, too, improved the lives of farmers. Amid this competition and obfuscation, Fairtrade with a capital F somehow remained the one on everybody's lips, the original and best, almost a generic word in the English language, a national treasure with recipe books endorsed by everyone from Oz Clarke and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to Joan Collins and Elton John. How did Fairtrade steal the limelight - and what makes it different?
'We did not start as a certifying body like the rest, thinking "Let's work with companies",' says Harriet Lamb, director of the Fairtrade Foundation. 'Our roots are in a social movement. We started with members of Oxfam, Christian Aid, church groups, the Women's Institute and trade unions, people who wanted to create change. We believe Fairtrade is owned by, and part of, that community.'
It is language all too reminiscent of the BBC series Lefties, but Fairtrade is literally owned by charities - among them Oxfam, Traidcraft and Banana Link, an organisation based in Norwich that campaigns for the rights of banana farmers. Like those charities, the Fairtrade movement is run by volunteers - members of the public who will this year organise 8,000 events up and down the country for Fairtrade Fortnight. Only a small skeleton staff works at the Clerkenwell offices.
'From the outset, the aim of our supporters was to tackle poverty,' says Lamb, 'and here was something they could do which was very concrete. If they bought Cafédirect or Maya Gold, they could really make a difference to those farmers. What works so well is that, although we are putting a spotlight on the negative, there is a positive solution to hand which everybody can be a part of. You don't have to wait for Government to move; you don't even have to wait for companies, because you can push them into acting by buying these products. So you've got all these NGOs, the church groups, and the community-based organisations - but the really fantastic thing about Fairtrade is that you can then go shopping!'
In a way, she has put her finger on it. Fairtrade is all about 'Volunteering Lite' - helping the poverty-stricken workers and children we see on our television screens every week simply by buying chocolate and cake. There is no need to become a VSO aid worker; no need to sell the house, uproot the family and move to Accra or Addis Ababa; no need to bounce around in four-wheel drives in the Congo, trying to save the world. We can assuage our middle-class guilt, feel better about our prosperous northern hemisphere roots by doing very little - in the comfortable knowledge that, in the developing world, a little goes a long way.
On the steps of the Mother's Union Hall in Kumasi, central Ghana, I begin to understand the difference retail therapy can make. There, Kwabena Ohemeng Tinyase, head of the Kuapa Kokoo co-operative, is telling me what we can do to help end poverty in Ghana. 'My advice to all consumers of chocolate is to buy more Fairtrade products,' he says. 'It gives a clear social message and it has a clear social benefit. You will not only be eating chocolate but helping people who are trapped in poverty because of the world market price. All of us have to go shopping - and Fairtrade is simply shopping with respect.'
Inside the hall, where the walls are draped with Mother's Union banners and Christian imagery, it feels like a crusade. This is the day when co-op members receive their end-of-year bonuses - made possible by the premiums paid by the Day Chocolate Company, maker of Divine and Dubble bars. In the village of Adansi Koforidua, the money has helped build a school, brought regular visits from doctors and provided safe drinking water from a hand-dug well and pump. Before, water was carried in jars from the polluted river Pla, spreading disease.
The quasi-religious, neo-socialist atmosphere in the hall reminds me of Harriet Lamb's point - that the roots of Fairtrade lie in charities, churches and trade unions. Like a union, the co-operative has its own democratically elected officials who supervise a trust fund into which the social premiums are paid. That money is allocated to projects that benefit entire villages - and every farmer has a say.
'That is the genius of Fairtrade,' says Albert Tucker, managing director of Twin, an alternative trading company in London. 'It's the transparency, the democracy, the way it avoids corruption. Things can go wrong in Fairtrade organisations but because they are accountable, it can always be dealt with. It doesn't just disappear because some wealthy individual says, "That's the way we do things".'
That is not the opinion of Philip Oppenheim, the author of a blistering attack in the Spectator last November - 'The Fairtrade fat cats' - which has left the organisation reeling. In it he alleges that some UK supermarkets charge up to 50p more than others for a kilo of Fairtrade bananas from the Caribbean, concluding that 'they must be making a killing' from that mark-up. (Since the time of his article some supermarkets have dropped the price of their Fairtrade bananas.)
Oppenheim points out that of the £1 extra paid for a bag of Fairtrade bananas, the proportion going back to the farmer is 4p, while of the 99p paid for a Fairtrade chocolate bar, the return for the cocoa grower is 'less than 2p'. If a supermarket charges £2.49 for a packet of own-brand Fairtrade coffee, when the combined cost of buying, shipping, roasting and packaging it 'cannot be much more than £1', it results in a gross profit margin of 160 per cent.
It's not exactly ethical, but it's not exactly news. Retailers stay in business by driving down the prices paid to farmers and preserving their own profit margins - making Oppenheim's article an indictment of capitalism rather than Fairtrade. As Harriet Lamb points out, 'We set the price for the farmers, which is the only bit we could ever begin to control. If we tried in any way to set the price for the consumer, we would be taken to the Competition Commission.' In other words, it is the retailers and middlemen who determine the mark-ups - based on the amount we are stupid enough to pay. At least under the Fairtrade system, it is consumers in the north who are being exploited, not impoverished farmers.
However, Fairtrade is not ring-fenced to criticism - particularly in the developing world. In El Salvador last month, I talked to Juan Marco Alvarez - executive director of SalvaNatura, an NGO working to save the dwindling rainforest. His organisation certifies coffee farms for the Rainforest Alliance, whose 'green-frog' logo also guarantees a premium price for growers - a better option, Alvarez believes, than Fairtrade. 'With some Fairtrade co-operatives,' he says, 'the premium is not trickling down to growers - and that I can guarantee. It's going straight to the bank because the co-operative has a bank debt. Yet there is always this assumption that the premium is going to benefit everyone.'
It's true that Fairtrade relies on trust, empowering farmers to do what they think best with their dividend - within reason. A far bigger objection is the fact that most Fairtrade co-operatives sell cash crops rather than finished products, meaning the value added by processing and packaging is reaped in the wealthy northern hemisphere rather than in the cash-strapped nations of the south.
'Ninety-eight per cent of Fairtrade chocolate is manufactured and packaged in Europe,' says Neil Kelsall, marketing director of Malagasy - a British company experimenting with Equitrade, an alternative economic model applied to products it imports from Madagascar. Of the revenue generated by a £1.70 bar of Fairtrade chocolate, he insists, only five per cent (8.5p) remains in the country of origin while the rest is dispersed in wealthy northern nations. With Equitrade, the proportion remaining in Madagascar would be 51 per cent (87p) - 40 per cent in added value retained by the manufacturers, plus a further 11 per cent paid by them in taxes to the Madagascar government. This would be reinvested in the country's Equitrade business. Compared to Fairtrade, Kelsall estimates, the new system could bring 20 times the economic benefit to the people of Madagascar.
According to Harriet Lamb of the Fairtrade Foundation, there are good reasons why chocolate is not manufactured in, say, Ghana - among them lack of milk supply, poor refrigeration and water shortages.
However, the problem of added value is being addressed - with Equal Exchange tea (packaged in India), some Fairtrade sugar (milled and processed in Malawi), orange juice and even 'fruit that's chopped up and made into little fruit salads' in Ghana. 'We will increasingly see processed Fairtrade goods coming into Britain,' says Lamb.
What we may not see is huge amounts of Nescafé Partners' Blend instant coffee, the latest addition to the Fairtrade product range. Sourced by Nestlé from co-operatives in Ethiopia and El Salvador, it represents 0.02 per cent of the multinational's coffee purchases and is hard to find on supermarket shelves.
Last year, when Fairtrade granted Nestlé the use of its mark, it effectively split the movement in two. In one camp was Harriet Lamb, saying: 'Here is a major multinational listening to people and giving them what they want.' In the other were the 'Fairtrade activists', grassroots supporters who believed the mark should never have been awarded to a company they considered unethical.
For many, the lone Fairtrade product in Nestlé's 8,500-strong portfolio simply threw the rest of its business into sharper relief. Few could forget the Ethiopian débâcle, in which Nestlé tried to sue the Addis Ababa government for $6m at the height of the 2002 famine that put 11m lives at risk. The claim, described by Nestlé as 'a matter of principle', related to assets seized after a military coup in the 1970s. In 2003, the multinational backed down after public pressure and accepted $1.5m from the Ethiopian government, which it donated to famine relief. Nor could Fairtrade supporters overlook the issue of powdered baby milk, aggressively marketed by Nestlé in the developing world, where the World Health Organisation estimates that 1.5m infants die each year due to 'inappropriate feeding' - substitutes that lack antibodies and often use filthy water.
All this, plus a commitment that some feel is expedient and tokenistic rather than sincere, has led to heated debate about Nestlé, a boycott of its new product and furious exchanges within the Fairtrade movement. 'We don't feel bad about it,' says Ian Bretman, deputy director of the Fairtrade Foundation, 'and this is a battle we intend to win. We want to get these people coming in on commercial grounds, we want to lock this into their core business - and I think that's now happening. We've already crossed these bridges working with Starbucks, the same debate about credibility. It's an ongoing discussion and part of a process.'
The same is true of Fairtrade's policy of certifying only small co-operatives and not large plantations - a policy that has alienated companies such as Kraft, Starbucks and Taylors of Harrogate, who say they will not sever their long-term relationships with large, privately-owned farms simply to become Fairtrade-certified. Kraft has opted for the Rainforest Alliance seal, awarded to farms of any size and ownership structure as long as they meet its environmental criteria. Starbucks sources from some Fairtrade co-operatives but also has its own certification scheme - CAFÉ (Coffee and Farmer Equity), a points system in which farmers accrue price premiums by meeting certain sustainability targets. Taylors, meanwhile, simply asks farmers to detail their costs and pays them 'a fair and sustainable price which may work out well above the Fairtrade price'. 'It's true that, with coffee, we do not certify plantations,' says Harriet Lamb, 'though we do in particular cases - such as fresh fruit. That is a robust debate we are always having, to find the right way forward. Believe me, none of this is easy.'
The truth is, for many companies seeking certification, the rules governing Fairtrade are too rigid - leaving even the most principled companies to invent their own systems or join alternative programmes. 'There are hundreds of organic certification schemes,' says Dr Sasha Courville, executive director of ISEAL - an alliance of certifying bodies. 'If you exclude organic, there's Rainforest Alliance, Utz Kapeh, the "four Cs" (Common Code for the Coffee Community), Bird Friendly and Forest Grown - and that's just for coffee. Then there are the other 'fair' programmes that are not within the Fairtrade labelling system. There have been competitors to Fairtrade products, such as the Kaoka chocolate bar in France which carries the bio equitable [organic fair trade] seal.'
The future, Dr Courville believes, is 'multiple certification' in which growers collect seals - rather like Scout badges - to be displayed on packaging, clocking up premiums for each. This, she maintains, would be good news for farmers. 'There are already large amounts of chocolate and coffee on the market that are both organic and Fairtrade,' she says. 'What also happens is that producers will get Fairtrade certification, which helps them strengthen their organisations and build capacity. Then they will use some of the Fairtrade premiums to invest in environmental programmes that will help them get other kinds of certification.'
It's a situation that worries Consumers International, which monitors growing markets and campaigns for consumer rights. This month, its report From Bean to Cup compares the top five ethical seals for coffee (concluding that Fairtrade offers the most tangible benefits for growers) and stresses the need for clarity. 'We want less confusion, more transparency, more information about the differences between the schemes,' says Richard Lloyd, director general of the federation. 'A lot of companies are making green claims, saying a product is ethically produced when it's not. The Fairtrade Foundation itself recognises that it has to be much better and smarter in how it markets itself relative to the others.'
Ian Bretman, deputy director of the Fairtrade Foundation, knows where he stands. 'Consumers should buy what they want, but if they want to make a difference to small farmers, make sure there is a social value to the product as well as an economic one, if they want a premium that means farmers can invest in their communities, only Fairtrade does that.'
That, in my experience, is rubbish - I have seen Equitrade and Rainforest Alliance schemes having a real impact on the ground - but as a quasi-religious organisation, Fairtrade is allowed its fundamentalism. However, there is a danger that this multitude of ethical labels will waylay consumers and undermine trust.
'What we don't want is 500 Fairtrade pretenders,' says Harriet Lamb, 'because then consumers will get confused, and become cynical, and give up on the whole thing. We have to be very protective of this change in the public mood that we have created. Having said that, we don't for one minute think the solution to all problems in world trade is Fairtrade. We're helping to create an atmosphere in which many people can play their part in many different ways. What we want to create is a situation where it is no longer acceptable to do nothing, where every company, and every individual, has to do something to make the world fairer.'
Observer food team tasted dozens of Fairtrade foods - these are our 'winners'
Best hot chocolate - Cocodirect
250g, £2.29, widely available
What it tastes like: chocolatey, comforting and delicious.
Who it helps: the cocoa in this drinking chocolate (a generous 40 per cent) comes from grower co-operatives in the Carribean, Latin America and Africa - allowing them to invest their profits in projects like cocoa plant nurseries.
Best cereal bar - Traidcraft Geobar
£1.79 for six, widely available
What it tastes like: foods which are both worthy and healthy, as these are, do have the potential to taste like sawdust. However, these apricot and raisin bars are very tasty indeed.
Who it helps: Traidcraft deal directly with the producers who grow the ingredients for their Geobars in Chile, Ghana, Malawi, Pakistan, Paraguay and South Africa.
Best coffee - Co-op after dinner roast coffee
227g, £2.05, 0800 068 6727
What it tastes like: a strong rich coffee to give you a major kickstart.
Who it helps: all the Co-op's coffees are fair trade - the price of coffee has dropped dramatically in recent years and as a consequence some growers find themselves making less than half what it costs to grow their crops. The Co-op wants to alleviate the poverty this causes by paying extra for their beans, bought from countries like Nicaragua.
Best wine - Thandi chardonnay
75cl, £6.64, www.tesco.com/winestore
What it tastes like: a zesty white, very easy to drink.
Who it helps: the wine is a product of a black empowerment initiative in South Africa, which helps support two villages in the Elgin Valley.
Best tea - Co-op organic tea bags
£1.95 for 80 bags, 0800 068 6727
What it tastes like: a mellow cuppa.
Who it helps: an isolated community in southern Tanzania, who have been able to construct a maize mill, community centre, nurseries, water pumps and start work on both a primary and secondary school.
· An exhibition of Trevor Leighton's photos for The Fairtrade Foundation is at the.gallery@oxo, Oxo Tower Wharf, Bargehouse Street, London SE1, 8-26 March, 11am-6pm, free entry. The exhibition is sponsored by the Co-operative Bank and Co-operative Insurance Services (CIS). Fairtrade Fortnight is from 9 March. Details: www.fairtrade.org.uk
