Fairtrade Premium reaches record high

The Fairtrade Premium neared €223m in 2022, a 10 per cent increase from the year earlier, according to a monitoring report released today by Fairtrade International.

The global certification’s fifteenth edition of the report showed that Fairtrade Premium received by producer organisations for Fairtrade’s top seven products – banana, cocoa, coffee, cotton, flowers, sugar and tea – totalled about €210m, while the premium for the minor products topped €12m.

The Fairtrade Premium is an additional amount on top of the selling price that is paid to producer organisations and which they democratically choose how to invest in their business and communities.

The small-scale producer organisations invested 36 per cent of their premium into improving production and farming practice, such as building processing plants and warehouses, as well as purchasing farm materials for members. Another 23 per cent was spent on financial benefits for farmers, whether direct cash payments to top up incomes or credit services.

Meanwhile, workers on Fairtrade certified plantations allocated 75 per cent of their Premium into social investments, including education and housing. Another 15 per cent was invested in financial benefits for workers and their families.

In addition to the Fairtrade Premium, the report includes a full set of data about producer organisations and their farmer members and workers, as well as the global production of each product, land area, and regional breakdowns.

As of the end of 2022, 1,910 producer organisations were Fairtrade certified, including 1,563 small-scale producer organisations (including those certified for contract production) and 347 larger farms that depend on a hired workforce (known as hired labour organisations). These organisations were made up of 1,848,268 farmers and 197,118 workers.

For the first time, the monitoring report also includes information about organic sales of the six largest Fairtrade products (excluding flowers, for which there is no organic category). Sixty-three per cent of the 730,176 metric tonnes of Fairtrade bananas sold were organic.

Women made up 21 per cent of all Fairtrade farmers in 2022, with the highest proportion of women growing Fairtrade certified cereals (60 per cent), oilseeds and oleaginous fruit like olives (41 per cent), and dried fruit (35 per cent). Forty-four per cent of Fairtrade workers were women, with workers on farms producing fruit juices topping the list at 74 per cent, followed by flowers and plants (54 per cent) and tea (52 per cent).