UK: Fairtrade fans create world record for Fairtrade bunting

Campaigners in Fairtrade Towns, universities, and schools throughout the UK organised thousands of events as part of a national record-breaking attempt to create the world’s longest and fairest string of bunting for Fairtrade Fortnight 2011. To secure the world bunting record, 12,500 individual decorated bunting flags made out of Fairtrade cotton triangles. Sewn together, they will make a two and a half mile statement about the importance of Fairtrade and trade justice for World Fair Trade Day on 14 May 2012 and will be used throughout the year to highlight the cotton campaign message. 
 

The bunting record attempt focussed attention on the poverty of more than 10 million West African people who rely on cotton for a living.  A recent Fairtrade Foundation report, The Great Cotton Stitch-Up , revealed that a US$ 31 billion wall of subsidies paid by the United Sates and the EU locks West Africa into poverty. The Great Cotton Stitch-Up outlines how US and EU subsidies have had a devastating effect on cotton farmers in West Africa and how some of the least developed nations in the world brought this issue to the World Trade Organisation, but have yet to reach an agreement. It explains that cotton subsidy reform hinges on the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the US Farm Bill, both of which are under review over the next two years.

Fairtrade Foundation