Two farmers left their homeland in Africa and travelled thousands of miles to deliver a fair trade message to shoppers in Sussex.

Comfort Kumeah and Mary Antwi Nyamekye had never left Ghana before but they wanted to highlight the need to treat cocoa farmers with fairness.

Comfort, 54, and Mary, 53, are both widows who, between them, have more than 30 years' experience of farming cocoa beans. But neither had ever seen chocolate cake or cocoa butter cream before their trip to Britain.

Mother-of-five Comfort said: "We produce the ingredients but we don't know how to make it into something edible and you eat it but you don't know where it comes from."

The farmers helped launch the Brighton Trade Justice Movement as part of Fair Trade Fortnight 2002.

They visited the Body Shop headquarters at Littlehampton, a branch of the shop in Brighton and The University of Sussex, where they talked to international development students.

Mary and Comfort work in a farmers' co-operative called Kuapa Kokoo, which set up its own chocolate trading company in 1998 with support from Christian Aid and Comic Relief.

The Day Chocolate Company is part-owned by The Body Shop, which produces a range of cocoa butter products made with beans from Ghana.

The Body Shop also sells fair trade chocolate products made for The Day Chocolate Company.

Varieties include Divine, Bubble and Divine Darkly.

Without fair trade, producers in developing countries say they can be exploited by multi-national companies and corrupt payment methods.

Mary, who has seven children, said: "Before, I was in a lot of hardship. Even my daily bread was a problem."

She said the man who weighed her cocoa beans used to be employed by the Government in Ghana and he would often try to cheat the farmers.

Now farmers employ the bean-weigher themselves and can vote to sack him if he tries to cheat anyone.

Comfort said: "I joined Kuapa Kokoo six years ago because it was the only company which could solve problems."

Mary, from Kunsu, and Comfort, from Mem, grow between four and 15 bags of cocoa a year. Each bag is worth about £40.

The co-operative has also set up a credit union to tide farmers over in bad times. According to Comfort, this can save a farmer who would otherwise lose everything because of debt.