Starbucks recently switched the majority of its coffee to Fairtrade in the UK and Ireland. After years of over-marketing their fair trade credentials in their stores and on their marketing and educational materials, the reality is catching up with the rhetoric.

Mind you, the rhetoric has stepped up another gear too, with a massive multimillion-pound ad campaign launched to squeeze out as much ethical mileage as possible. Like the big budget television ad focused on Fairtrade and Ghana currently being run by Cadbury, the Starbucks campaign marks an interesting point where, in this country at least, Fairtrade has become not so much a burdensome extra cost for companies as a powerful marketing tool.

Cocoa prices hit a 24-year high last week, reaching $3,183 per tonne on the New York futures market, now well above the Fairtrade minimum price floor of $1,600 a tonne. Meanwhile the International Cocoa Organisation (ICCO) revised down its forecasted surplus for next year’s harvest from 100,000 tonnes to 25,000-50,000 tonnes.

It seems that demand for cocoa – which took a hit because of the global recession – is picking up again more quickly than expected, even as production is predicted to fall.