'Fair' to the last bean: in the fair-trade coffee market, small Colorado roasters refine the movement--and their customers--on their own terms.

Tucked deep in a nondescript Boulder office park, Conscious Coffees looks like your average shop for roasting beans. A sizeable 16-foot bean roaster dominates the company's main warehouse room, while large burlap bags of unprocessed coffee beans sit against the surrounding walls.

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The heavy coffee aroma mixes with cold air to create a perfume irresistible to the 50 percent of Americans who drink the beverage every day. But upon closer examination, Conscious Coffees' fair-trade principles, which support direct improvements for farmers and sustainable environmental practices, make it different from your average roaster.

Piles of empty 5-pound coffee bags sit in the backroom that owners Mel and Mark Evans-Glenn have retrieved from customers; the couple recycles all of its packaging. There are no visible trash receptacles in the building; Conscious Coffees is a "zero-waste" business. And if you look deep into Conscious Coffees' accounting books, you can see that it pays about 40 cents per pound over the fair-trade floor price for coffee in an effort to guarantee that farmers get fair and reasonable wages for their work.

The business of fair-trade coffee is a booming industry in Colorado and beyond. According to TransFair USA, the agency that certifies fair-trade products in the United States, about 64.7 million pounds of coffee were certified fair trade in 2006. The agency has noted a growth of at least 10 million pounds of coffee per year. The rise is largely due to corporations like Starbucks, Sam's Club and Dunkin' Donuts, which now carry fair-trade coffee. Boulderbased Celestial Seasonings recently launched a line of fair-trade certified whole bean coffee.

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But with success comes challenges. The meaning of fair-trade to Conscious Coffees, which views it as an all-encompassing philosophy, is different than that of Starbucks or Sam's Club, which view the coffee as one of many "flavors" and do not adopt many of the movement's core sustainability beliefs. TransFair spokesman Anthony Marek says his agency does not represent the movement, but rather the regulation of fair-trade practices.

"If you want to affect any kind of social change one needs to work within the system to affect change," he says.

But hard-core idealists like Mark Evans-Glenn aren't so sure. TransFair regulations don't go far enough, he says.

"Fair trade is not just about paying a fair price to the farmers, it's about taking care of our planet," he says. "If we expect (the farmers) to do it, why wouldn't we expect ourselves to do it? That's part of the model and principles--to create a sustainable way of growing coffee. We should have a sustainable way of roasting it, as well."

It is this philosophical bone of contention that Conscious Coffees and other small roasters have grappled with in recent years. For some retailers, the solution is to initiate "direct trade" relationships on their own terms with coffee farmers, forgoing fair-trade product certification from TransFair USA, the main regulatory agency on fair trade.

"We don't have that logo," says Mel Evans-Glenn. "We have to work harder with our own voices and our own time to show what we're doing and why."

The move is an uphill battle for those coffee roasters that don't use the official TransFair "Bucket Boy" logo on their packaging. Like the organic label's growth in the '90s, awareness of fair-trade certification is growing among consumers, moving from 12 percent in 2004 to 27 percent in 2006, according to the National Coffee Association.

For Herb Brodsky, co-owner of Novo Coffee in Denver, it is a gamble that has paid off. Brodsky's main reason for establishing direct trade with coffee farmers is the issue of quality. Forgoing certification enables his company to focus on producing high quality beans, which have won praise from Coffee Review, a guide for coffee buyers. Brodsky says his company works directly with farmers to teach specific practices and increase the quality (and value) of crops.

"In a sense, it's a fairer trade," he says. "Not only does it incorporate paying farmers significantly more money than the going prices, but it also involves getting closer to the farmers."

As attitudes about what defines fair trade become more sophisticated, Laura Raynolds, co-director of the Center for Fair and Alternative Trade Studies at Colorado State University, says the movement's consumer base is also changing.

A decade ago, the movement had a small but socially conscious group of supporters. Today, anyone walking through the double doors of their local supermarket is a potential consumer of fair-trade coffee. Raynolds says the certified fair-trade label matters to the average shopper. However, smaller roasters have greater success at reaching the more socially conscious fair-trade shoppers who care about specific practices.

"I think the businesses that you're talking about need to be clear (about) who they are, what they're doing and why what they're doing is special and needs to be supported," she says. "Sometimes as consumers, we're too busy to understand the subtleties."

From a business perspective, the smaller consumer base can be lucrative for small roasters, Raynolds says. The most tenuous business might be one built on fickle consumers who think that fair trade is a good thing today, and tomorrow buy something else, she says.

Coffee roasters who choose to define fair-trade on their own terms aren't doing it without risks. Allan Kupczak, roaster and owner of Veloce Coffee, which certifies its fair-trade coffee with TransFair, says that as companies decide to go down this road it creates an issue of oversight. Kupczak says he's not thrilled that larger corporations are now part of the fair-trade movement, but notes that the movement can help more farmers and raise consumer awareness as a result. For Kupczak, TransFair regulation is vital to the business of fair-trade coffee.

"If you monitor yourself, you can lie," he says.

For Raynolds, it's questions like these that will weigh heavily with Colorado roasters in the years to come. It is because of the movement's success that the marketplace has a diverse spectrum of fair-trade coffee options, she says.

Ultimately, it is up to coffee drinkers--and their vital quest for the caffeinated fix--to decide what they think is "fair."

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOSEPH BRODSKY