A campaign to help some of the world’s hungriest people is stepping up a gear.

Launched during Fairtrade Fortnight earlier this year, the Make Food Fair campaign seeks to change the lives of smallholder farmers around the world.

Now its Fairtrade Foundation organisers are planning to take a petition to Downing Street.

They will be calling on David Cameron to champion a better deal for the world’s smallholder farmers at this year’s G8 meeting in June in Northern Ireland.

Karen Palframan, chairman of Ilkley Fairtrade group and Bradford Fairtrade Zone, said: “Despite producing 70 per cent of the world’s food, over half the world’s hungriest people are smallholder farmers who struggle to earn a living from their crops.

“Unless they receive support and improvements to terms of trade, they will remain in crisis due to an unjust food system.

“The farmers still only get a tiny proportion of what we pay for our food and agriculture needs to be made much more sustainable to create food security.”

The petition will be handed in just before World Fair Trade Day on May 11. To publicise it, a small army of 5,000 paper “mini-marchers” descended on London’s Parliament Square in March.

Campaigners are now urging everyone to go online to join the campaign and sign the petition.

An early signatory to the petition, Mrs Palframan has been invited by the Fairtrade Foundation to help hand in the petition to the Prime Minister.

“I am really honoured to have been asked to do this,” she said. “I never dreamed my support for the campaign would lead me to Downing Street.

“Our voices can be heard and hopefully we can influence powerful decision makers. Food and hunger are on the G8 agenda and we must ensure the farmers providing our food are not going hungry themselves. Let’s unite and make our voices heard even more loudly then they were during the Make Poverty History campaign in 2005.

“I would ask you to sign the Make Food Fair petition and also to buy products with the Fairtrade logo as these guarantee a fair deal for farmers.”

The petition can be signed online at fairtrade.org.uk/gofurther.