In Britain, we knock back 70 million cups of coffee daily, but only 4.3 million are Fairtrade - that's around just six per cent of what we drink. A coffee farmer is lucky to get even five pence from that non-Fairtrade cup of coffee you buy every day in a high-street chain for £1.75.

As yet five million people in Africa, Latin America and Asia benefit from Fairtrade products in general, but 20 million farmers in 50 countries on or around the equator rely solely on coffee for their livelihoods. Imagine what a difference could be made to those 20 million people if we all drank Fairtrade coffee, especially in countries like Ethiopia, where coffee accounts for over half of foreign- exchange earnings.

Right now, ordinary market prices for coffee are almost as high as Fairtrade - the minimum Fairtrade price for Arabica coffee is US 122 cents per pound plus a five cent premium, and today's market price is 116 cents; this only illustrates how unpredictable life is for coffee farmers. In October 2001 prices dropped to 45 cents - in real terms the lowest ever - leaving many coffee farmers surviving on less than a dollar a day. Fairtrade may have its critics, but at least it is working to try to prevent that kind of poverty.

Low prices translate into big profits for multinationals though: a company processing one million 60kg bags of coffee could have been about $80 million better off in 2001 than in 2000 because of the fall in bean prices. Nestlé, Kraft and Sarah Lee (who own Douwe Egberts and Senseo) process more than 10 million bags each a year.

But Fairtrade is not just about getting cash back to the growers. All Fairtrade coffee farmers must comply with various standards - setting up their own committees to decide how their premium money should be spent, and generally developing their businesses. Perhaps, most importantly, even if not all their produce is sold as Fairtrade (which is the case for most producers - we simply don't buy enough of it to support the market), farmers learn how their markets work and that the price offered to them by traders is set in New York. So even if they aren't selling to fair-traders they can at least understand the process and know if they are being exploited.

What to buy

On the high street

AMT Coffee is the first 100 per cent Fairtrade high-street chain - find its kiosks at airports and train stations. Pret a Manger sells Fairtrade coffee as standard in its decaf and filter coffees, and says the rest of its coffee is 'ethically sourced'. Starbucks and Costa do sell Fairtrade coffee, but you have to ask for it at the counter. Caffè Nero says that it follows the Fairtrade example by paying a premium, but none of its coffee is actually Fairtrade certified.

Clipper and M&S

Some of their coffee is supplied by Kagera Co-operative Union (KCU), which is made up of 90,000 small-scale coffee farmers in a remote region of north-west Tanzania. HIV infection runs at 25 per cent in Kagera; this plus environmental disasters over the past few decades (an attempt at re-stocking Lake Victoria led to insect plagues that hammered local agriculture) and the falling price of coffee has left farmers struggling desperately. Now, however, the co-op has invested some of its premium money into an old instant coffee factory, allowing farmers to sell their low-grade, non-exportable coffee to Tanzanians, thus reducing dependence on exports.

The premium money has also been used to fund three schools and attract quality teachers. On the farms themselves, farmers are being encouraged to go organic, so they can sell their beans for more money. Each of the 124 village co-ops that make up the Union is also given $2,000 every year to spend on the village as they see fit - repair the church, buy a coffee-hulling machine, build more classrooms - thus giving villagers the opportunity to decide their own future.

Equal Exchange Coffee

The company uses some Gumutindo Union coffee, which is from a region in eastern Uganda where 91 per cent of people rely on coffee farming. Almost all the Union members live in wattle and mud huts, and often they can't afford iron sheeting for their roofs and have to use grass instead. Selling Fairtrade coffee has meant they've been able to set up clinics and schools and repair their roads.

Cafédirect

Some of their coffee is made using beans from Llano Bonito, a co-operative in Costa Rica (part of the larger Coocafe co-op) with 532 members. They return 80 per cent of their premium cash directly to the growers, who need it because in the last few years conventional coffee prices have been so low and they can only sell 30 per cent of their coffee as Fairtrade. The remaining 20 per cent goes towards things like scholarships - 165 village children have been sent to school since 2000. Fifty cents of every $100 of Fairtrade sales goes to Coocafe's Cafe Forestal Foundation, which enabled the co-op to buy two bean-drying ovens that run on dried coffee hulls and macadamia nutshells from a neighbouring co-op rather than firewood, thus saving 10 hectares of forest a year.

Taylors of Harrogate

Its Fairtrade organic coffee comes from the Coomprocom co-operative in Nicaragua where Fairtrade premiums have provided two wells, environmentally-friendly eco-stoves for 80 families and a clinic that serves 500 people. The co-op also bought books for a local school, helped with building materials for coffee pickers' homes, and constructed a coffee-tasting room.

Co-op

All Co-op coffee is Fairtrade, and some of it comes from Fedecocagua, a co-operative with 20,000 members from different regions of Guatemala. After the destruction from hurricane Mitch in 1998, the co-operative helped channel money into re-building the coffee industry, and premium money has been used to set up health centres and pharmacies.

Percol

Their Columbia freeze-dried coffee comes from the Pinipay and Pipinta regions near Bogata where 80 families are involved in Fairtrade. Twenty of those families have been able to improve their homes in the past year.

Useful websites: www.fairtrade.org.uk, www.traidcraft.co.uk, www.oxfam.co.uk, www.taylorsofharrogate.co.uk, www.clipper-teas.co.uk, cafedirect.co.uk, www.equalexchange.co.uk, www.percol.co.uk. Fairtrade Fortnight runs from 26 Feb to 11 March