Beans are green but owners are not at Toronto coffee company Brad and Derek Zavislake drink their coffee with a clear conscience. And they sell it that way too. The Toronto brothers, co-founders of import/wholesale company Merchants of Green Coffee, are part of a small but passionate movement to introduce fairly traded coffee to Canadian consumers. Not sure what the term means? Not many people are - yet. Fairly traded arabica coffee is bought directly from farming co-operatives in developing nations for a fair price. It's a system that helps struggling small-scale farmers secure credit, build long-term nusiness relationships and nurture their land. This is in stark contrast to the standard system in which impoverished farmers sell fresh-picked beans to middlemen at low prices. The beans are dried, processed and eventually traded at the world price, set by the New York stock Exchange. "We are exploiting people in developing countries and we are exploiting the planet. This is a fact and we have to stop it," says Brad Zavislake. "The best way to deal with that is for business to step in and adopt fair trade and sustainable business practices." For Merchants of Green Coffee, that means tapping into the burgeoning specialty coffee market in an ethical way. It sell only fairly traded beans (paying farmers a minimum of $2 US a pound), and it sells them green to promote home roasting. "We're selling better tasting coffee," says Zavislake, whose Riverdale-based business is attracts the odd retail customer. "The fair trade and whole sustainable aspects are a tag on, a plus. So you can support it or don't support it. It really comes down to the taste of the cup - that's what consumers buy." At Alternative Grounds Coffeehouse and Roastery on Roncesvalles Ave., owner Linda Burnside sells only fairly traded beans in her cafŽ, mail order and wholesale business. Burnside sources her beans through American alternative trade organization Equal Exchange which deals directly with farmer co-operatives. As part of the agreement, she pays 60 per cent up front when placing an order to give farmers much-needed cash flow. She also pays a premium that's usually 20 to 30 per cent above the floor or world price for coffee. Profits from these premiums are distributed within co-operatives, allowing farmers and their families to control their businesses and communities instead of relying on charity handouts. This doesn't mean that coffee consumers lose out here at home. "Our prices are similar to anybody else's," says Burnside. "It's just our profit margins that would be somewhat different. But they're fair." A cup of coffee at Alternative Grounds is $1.20 (Canadian), while a latte is $2.75. Regular beans go for $12 a pound while decaf beans fetch $13 a pound. These prices are in line with those paid those paid by specialty coffee consumers elsewhere, who make up the fastest-growing segment of the Canadian coffee-drinking public. "Our customers are people who have a concern about social and environmental justice, and people who are just coffee keeners," Burnside says. A percentage of sales (13 cents a pound) from Alternative Grounds goes to Fair TradeMark Canada, which licenses and promotes the fair trade label in Canada. The non-profit company is the Canadian affiliate of Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International which licensed the sale of 24 million pounds of coffee beans through 130 European brand names in more than 35,000 supermarkets last year. Up to 80 per cent of consumers say they'll pay more for fairly traded products but only about 5 per cent actually do when given a chance, according to Fair TradeMark Canada's managing director Bob Thomson. The concept of fair trade is in its infancy in Canada. The movement originated in Germany in 1987 and now captures between 1 and 5 per cent of the retail market share for coffee in that country, Holland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. "People say the quality has to be equivalent or better to what's out there, it has to be easily available and that they want an independent organization to certify that fair trade claims are not just marketing hype," Thomson says. Of the 10 companies licensed to carry the Fair TradeMark Canada label, six are alternative trading outfits (like Alternative Grounds, Bridgehead Inc. in Ottawa and Tributaries cafŽ and roastery in Guelph) and four are commercial businesses such as Merchants of Green Coffee. They pay a minimum of $1.26 (U.S.) a pound for green arabica beans, or 5 cents a pound above the fluctuating world price. "They're telling me that the extra cost of selling fair trade coffee is in the neighborhood of 45 to 50 cents a pound," says Thomson. "When you're selling coffee at $10 a pound, they don't see that as an obstacle." Considering that a pound of coffee yields 60 to 70 cups, that translates to an extra cost of just pennies per cup. Alan Shabsove of The Roastery Coffee Co. sells wholesale beans to about 500 specialty coffee stores across Canada. To please about 10 customers, he has been buying two fairly traded coffees from Merchants of Green Coffee for about eight months. The Sleepless Goat CafŽ in Kingston, Coffee By Design in Dundas and The Little Red Roaster in London are also strong supporters of the concept. "The great thing about fair trade coffee is it's good for everybody," says Shabsove. "The problem is it's very hard to get, it's very expensive for me to sell to my customers and it's still a new product." He estimates that 99 per cent of specialty coffee drinkers are oblivious to the fair trade concept and the exploitive working conditions of small coffee farmers. That's something that Oxfam Canada hopes to address with a brochure listing more than 20 Toronto restaurants, cafes and food stores that sell fair trade coffee. Fair TradeMark Canada's brochure "Farmer Friendly, Earth Friendly Coffee" urges consumers to look for its logo and join its "buycott not boycott". It rallied 1,000 churches to take on fair trade coffee as the theme of this year's Ten Days for Global Justice campaign, which is spreading the word about the gap between Third World farmers and First World consumers. And now Fair TradeMark Canada is urging major coffee companies to provide fair prices and commercial contracts to farmers in Honduras and Nicaragua devastated by Hurricane Mitch who must begin harvest next month. Back at Merchants of Green Coffee, the Zavislakes are gearing up to sell 15,000 pounds of solar-dried, fairly traded beans from Costa Rica in 1999. They sold just 100 pounds this year to test the market. The beans will be dried using new technology developed in the U.S. specifically for small coffee farmers who can use it to sell processed coffee for higher profits. "Now we just have to find a market," says Derek Zavislake as he relaxes over a cup of his solar-dried brew.