COLDPLAY - COLDPLAY SEEK FAIR TRADE IN MEXICO

COLDPLAY vocalist CHRIS MARTIN has shown his support for the fair trade movement by taking up a hand-guided plough in Mexico and trying to do work of peasant farmers.

The YELLOW band spent some time with Mexican corn farmers to demonstrate their belief that opening agricultural markets to free trade drives small farmers out of business.

Martin - GWYNETH PALTROW's boyfriend - told watching press, "This is an injustice. These people should be fairly rewarded for their work. We get fairly rewarded for ours."

Martin found the experience enlightening, not least because he realised how difficult the farmers' work was.

He added, "We are a billboard for the idea, rather than a solution to the problem. We're Champaign socialists, but we believe in equality. If I hadn't had help from these farmers, I would have gone straight into the earth and dug a new Panama Canal."

Mexican corn producers, who grow their own food on minute plots, struggle to compete with imports from expansive, government-subsidized American farms.

Coldplay, who won two GRAMMYS and three MTV awards this year (03), timed their Mexican tour to coincide with a World Trade Organisation meeting being held in the resort of Cancun.

Ministers from the WORLD TRADE ORGANISATION's 146 member states will discuss a trade treaty cutting tariffs and subsidies, and further opening markets to foreign trade.

Coldplay are performing in Mexico City before traveling to Cancun to deliver a petition, written by the British charity OXFAM, to trade ministers attending the conference. The petition, which carries over three million signatures from around the world, asks governments to 'Make Trade Fair' by taking measures such as reducing subsidies to farmers in rich countries.