LONDON: It is called fair trade - a movement aimed at making sure that farmers in Asia and the rest of the developing world get a reasonable price for their products.

While fair trade products have been around for over 20 years, greater public awareness is now driving their popularity in wealthy consumer markets.

In London, fair trade sales look set to double annually in the coming years.

It began with coffee and bananas and has moved on to wine, tea and even underwear.

Like consumers in other rich countries, many British consumers are interested in buying ethically-made goods and produce, with producers getting a fair price.

The Fair Trade Foundation is just one of 16 similar organisations around the world.

It has a strict certification system to ensure that farmers get paid a guaranteed price for their commodities, often at an above-market-price.

The certification system also makes sure that farm labourers in developing countries get paid a living wage, that no child labour is involved, and unions are permitted.

The Co-op was Britain's first supermarket chain to adopt fair trade produce back in 1992 - when it started selling fair trade coffee.

"The Co-op continues to stock the widest range in our larger stores. And that's anything from the produce and the coffee where it all started to things like cotton carrier-bags and cakes and ales and those sorts of things. So, again looking for ways we can innovate and bring fair trade to new markets all the time," says Brad Hills, consumer policy manager, The Co-op.

Recent figures show that the amount spent on fair trade products is running at US$580m each year.

What is more, sales of fair trade products are set to double every year in Britain.

"You have companies like Marks and Spencer who last year switched all their tea and all their coffee to fair trade. And another example of that, Sainsbury's has just recently switched all their bananas to fair trade. Now these are really significant moves, because not only does it make it easier for you and me to go shopping and find fair trade products but it's also beginning to set the norm and to say the norm is fair trade," says Harriet Lamb, Executive Director, Fairtade Foundation.

Matching the surge in fair trade products, more than 260 companies make those products available across Britain.

The figures suggest that consumers are becoming increasingly conscientious and ethically-minded when shopping.

Ms Lamb says, "People have to understand that there is a problem in mainstream trade. They have to understand the desperate poverty that is afflicting the lives of so many, for example coffee small-holders throughout the world, who actually a few years ago saw coffee prices fall to the lowest level ever. And that meant that farmers in Ethiopia were selling the tin roofs off their houses, taking their children out of school, going back to subsistence farming. When the British public hear about that, they are not comfortable with it. They don't want to be part of those kinds of problems in the other parts of the world."

Last year British consumers spent almost US$10m on fair trade cotton goods - a recent arrival in the ethical market.

Clothing retailer Marks and Spencer is among stores planning to sell more of the range in the coming year as part of its ethical overhaul.

While the fair trade boom might be pulling in big profits for British retailers it undoubtedly has life-changing effects for some of the world's poorest farmers.

The premium that fair trade items command is pumped back into projects such as education, housing and childcare in producer countries across Africa, Asia and South America. - CNA/yy