We have just completed Fairtrade Fortnight. Thank you to all those local stores that promoted the event and now sell Fairtrade goods and the shoppers who buy them. This is an important cause that has a real impact on people’s lives, as I have seen for myself.

Wearing a Stick with Foncho campaign T-shirt with Collette Som, the Fairtrade ‘banana lady’ of Calne and attending the Shrove Tuesday event at Christ Church in Derry Hill, to hopefully boost the campaign, was the least I could do.

As an aid worker in Central America I have witnessed the terrible suffering when fair wages and prices are not paid.

This impact falls disproportionately on women and girls. Etched on my memory are the sights I saw at the malnourished children’s unit run by Save the Children Fund UK in the north west of Honduras.

There baby girls were treated for starvation. Girls, tragically, in these communities are less valued than boys so when the food runs short they are starved.

The shortage of food was due to seasonal agricultural wages of less than a dollar a day. This was in stark contrast to the agricultural workers in Costa Rica, a country to the south where democracy has lasted for more than 150 years. There I found the daily wage at the time to be a fairer one, of between $19 and $26 a day. This meant a life without hunger for the whole family and children going to school.

So Fairtrade must not just be for a fortnight. It may cost us all a few pence more, but it makes a real difference to people’s lives.

Dr Brian Mathew, North Wiltshire Parliamentary Candidate, Liberal Democrats.