10:25 AM EDT on Wednesday, October 27, 2004

BY GAIL CIAMPA
Journal Food Editor

What is Fair Trade and why should it matter to you when buying coffee, tea or chocolate?

The answer, according to local companies who have committed to selling products for which farmers around the globe are paid a fair price, has two parts.

"It's the right thing to do," said Susan Wood, CEO for Providence's Coffee Exchange. "How can you make a living on the back of someone else? How could you live with yourself?"

And even if you turn a cold heart to her moral argument, consider Wood's roaster's point of view.

"If we don't help the farmer, we're not going to have access to great coffee because farmers aren't going to be able to do their job anymore," she said. "Then we all lose."

There are also economic issues at play. Wood said there is an international coffee crisis. Farmers are getting such a small amount of money because of the huge supply of coffee. A bumper-crop year in Brazil and Colombia and the emergence of Vietnam as a coffee producer have flooded the market with coffee. Farmers who can't make a profit are plowing under their crops, especially in Central America.

So when you see that "Fair Trade Certified" label, understand it's not just food with a cause. The concept blends powerful components of sustainability (growing things that enrich, not drain or pollute the land); artisan products (hand-tended rather than mass-produced); organics (not using chemicals and pesticides); and social responsibility.

"Fair trade lets farmers stay on their land in a natural eco-system," explained Haven Bourque, marketing director for TransFair USA, an Oakland, Calif.-based independent certifier of fair trade practices for products coming into the United States. Fair trade products are generally also certified organic, as they are probably grown without pesticides using traditional methods that protect native trees and birds.

The non-profit group gives U.S. vendors access to certified products. They started certifying fair trade coffees in 1998, then added tea and chocolate and, most recently, bananas.

Last year, TransFair certified 18.7 million pounds of coffee, a growth rate of 91 percent from the previous year. In five years, the income generated for Fair Trade coffee farmers was $34 million.

But here's the best news: "Quality has caught up with cause," said Donald Machado, owner of Tiverton's Coastal Roasters, a two-year-old company.

By dealing in Fair Trade products, Machado is able to bring his social and political principles to market. Being socially conscious doesn't hurt his business, he said: "It's more the other way around."

Customers, especially Baby Boomers, seek out Fair Trade items because most are specialty coffees.

"They've been well-tended," he said. "So people don't mind paying a little more for wonderful coffees."

Coastal Roasters is a wholesale and retail coffee-roasting company with a cafe at 1791 Main Rd., Tiverton. Some 75 percent of his coffees are fair trade and organic, and 99 percent of his whole-leaf teas are so designated. He also has a fair-trade cocoa product. His goal is to integrate more Fair Trade products, bananas and sugar most likely.

Bourque likens Fair Trade to a "global farmers' market." Some local roasters can trace what farmers have done with their profits, like buying a new truck. Indeed a visit to www.coastalroasters.com, Machado's company Web site, talks about a possible trip to Central Honduras to the village of Majastre, where a 20-member co-op has benefited from Fair Trade.

It's not just independents involved, either. Starbucks has committed to a line of Fair Trade coffees, and Bourque said all the beans used in Dunkin' Donuts espresso beverages are Fair Trade certified.

Buying fair-trade products helps sustain small farms in poor countries, and the difference can be enough to provide health care for a family. These are among the issues for Gerra Harrigan, director of business development at New Harvest Roasters in Rumford.

A Brown history major, Rik Kleinfeldt, started New Harvest Roasters with the big Fair Trade idea. He noted that when you pay $11 or $12 a pound for conventional arabica coffee, only about 20 cents goes to the farmer.

With Fair Trade, farmers get a minimum of $1.26 per pound, $1.41 if it is certified organic, though most Fair Trade coffees are organic already, according to TransFair.

Business being business, American companies have to keep prices down, too. Which they do, charging a competitive $8.50 a pound for Fair Trade coffees as opposed to $7.50 for the estate line of conventionally purchased coffees.

New Harvest Coffee Roasters is partnering with three local cafes to offer Fair Trade certified coffee at a discount throughout this month: Olga's Cup and Saucer in Providence; The Coffee Depot in Warren and Nepenthe in East Greenwich.

Both Harrigan and Kleinfeldt got introduced to the Fair Trade concept working for the Coffee Exchange, roaster retailers with a retail cafe at 207 Wickenden St., Providence, and an Internet business at www.mailordercoffee.com.

The company's co-founders include Charlie Fishbein and Bill Fishbein, who started a group called Coffee Kids. It's a different approach to helping farmers in spots such as Central America.

Coffee Kids raises funds in the coffee industry to offer loans to farming families. The program helps the women of these families find secondary sources of income. A loan as small as $50 to $100 will enable her to start a small chicken- or pig-farming business or open a small store. The income gets the children out from working in the fields, helps support the family and offers role models in the community. The money is paid back to a village bank to be loaned out again.

But for most of the farmers, Fair Trade remains the only option for survival.

"We start our day with a cup of coffee," said TransFair's Bourque. "There's powerful imagery there: We are enjoying something grown in a beautiful country. Fair trade is a guarantee that the farmer who grew the coffee beans got a fair price for his top-quality product that has been grown and picked by human hands.

"People want a fair day's wage for a day's work. Fair Trade asks people to care about that even if the workers aren't in this country."