8 May 2024

Fairtrade Premium reached record high of €222.8 million

Bonn, Germany - Continuing to steadily grow and positively impact the lives of more than two million farmers and workers, the Fairtrade Premium neared €223 million in 2022, a 10 percent 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 €210 million, while the Premium for the minor products topped €12 million. 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 percent 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 percent 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 percent of their Premium into social investments, including education and housing. Another 15 percent 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-four percent of the 231,188 metric tonnes of Fairtrade coffee sold by producers in 2022 was organic, while a similar 63 percent of the 730,176 metric tonnes of Fairtrade bananas sold were organic. In addition, organic cotton made up half of all cotton producers’ Fairtrade sales.

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

To read the full report, please click here.