Fairtrade Fortnight kicks off this week in the UK, with thousands of events set to take place across the country, including the new Make Bananas Fair campaign.
The campaign highlights the fact that banana prices have halved over the past decade, while costs to farmers have nearly doubled, and it includes a petition demanding that the UK government investigate the impact of retailer pricing practices.
Fairtrade banana sales grew by 4 per cent last year, with an estimated 1.42bn bananas sold.
Albeiro Alfonso Cantillo Ruiz, of Colombian co-operative Coobafrio, who is visiting the UK during Fairtrade Fortnight and is leading the banana campaign, commented: 'We experienced very difficult times when we weren't in Fairtrade. We didn't have the resources to provide an education for my children, and the banana business barely provided enough for basic meals.'
Fairtrade fresh vegetables have also seen growth in 2013, of a staggering 316 per cent due to the conversion of popular products such as Kenyan green beans.
Although sales of Fairtrade products rose by 14 per cent during 2013 to £1.78bn, Michael Gidney, chief executive of the Fairtrade Foundation, acknowledged the amount of work to be done.
'There is still a very long way to go in securing the levels of market access that would drive the breadth and depth of impact for farmers and workers we all want to see,' he said, 'so work in 2014 will continue to focus on innovating the way we work and campaigning to make even more trade fair.'
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