Endangered Foods | Fairtrade Fortnight
Fairtrade Fortnight 2023 took place from 27 February – 12 March 2023.
The 2023 campaign highlights the urgent threat to the future of the foods we love and the livelihoods of the people who grow them.
Did you know coffee and chocolate could soon be much more difficult to find on our shelves?
Climate change is making crops like these harder and harder to grow. Combined with deeply unfair trade, communities growing these crops are being pushed to the brink.
The Future of Coffee
The impact of climate change on agricultural production and the future of food is well- known with commodities such as coffee having long been in the climate spotlight. Studies suggest that by 2050, in fact, up to half of the world’s land currently used to farm coffee may be unusable.
Fairtrade coffee farmers in Kenya are already facing the effects of climate change: a recent Fairtrade survey of coffee farmers in Fairtrade co-operatives demonstrated that 93% of the Fairtrade coffee farmers in Kenya surveyed are already experiencing the effects of climate change, including more erratic rainfall and an increase in pests and diseases, like thrips and coffee berry disease.
Coffee farmers in the Caribbean and Central America, such as the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua are at risk of increased heatwaves and droughts as a result of climate change.
We hear from Odessa, a Fairtrade coffee farmer from Honduras, who, with the help of her Fairtrade cooperative, was able to get more power, independence and income
Meet The Farmer | Odessa Michelle Grant
Fairtrade coffee farmer, Honduras
Odessa is recharging coffee-growing traditions by bringing down barriers to women earning enough from their crop. "...when men handed over part of the ownership of the farms to their wives and daughters, there were a lot of tears, it's no small thing." After her coffee community was badly hit by hurricanes two years ago, readdressing the gender balance is giving members hope for the future.
This shake-up of traditional land ownership offers Odessa and her fellow women farmers more power, more independence and perhaps most importantly in the climate and cost-of-living crises, more income.
Fairtrade has supported the legal process through the co-operative to which Odessa belongs. It’s paved the way for Odessa to take a seat on the board and inspire other women to come together to market their coffee as an all-woman grown specialty product.
Did You Know
Last year, Foodbuy raised a total of £58 000+ of Fairtrade Premium through coffee sales alone. That’s more than double our impact from previous years, and the equivalent of 223 farmers supported.
