Ive lost track of how many years ago they started talking at my church about fair trade coffee, and I didnt have a clue of what they were saying. But they began selling the bags of coffee on the patio on Sundays and now it brings in a tidy sum for maximum benefit for native coffee growers enrolled in Just Coffee. Even the coffee regularly served on campus is Just Coffee, and some feel their coffee habit is helping Latin American farmers. The idea is that growers will get a just price for their beans, and economic justice is the end product. Now fair trade products are all the rage in faith communities as they become sensitized to Third World agriculture and industry. They are being taught that they can change their own routine buying habits and make a difference. They can purchase products through channels that bypass corporate American giants who otherwise would pay growers the minimum to get maximum profits for companies and stockholders. On Wednesday, for example, Lutheran World Relief announced it is now an investing partner in Divine Chocolate Inc., which is the sister company of British-based Divine Chocolate Limited. It is described as a pioneering farmer-owned fair trade chocolate company. Among its missions will be building still greater support for the fair trade movement in the U.S. Its goal and that of the wide movement is to ensure that farmers are fairly compensated so their families can experience true gains in their lives and even taste prosperity. Expect Lutherans to feel better about their chocolate addiction. Lutheran World Relief explains that in most chocolate companies, the farmers who grow the cocoa are anonymous players in the chocolate equation. They sell their crop to a middleman, have no say in how their crop is used, receive little benefit from the billions of dollars in global chocolate sales and have never tasted chocolate themselves. It says that Divine Chocolates model gives farmers a voice. A cocoa farmers cooperative in Ghana called Kuapa Kokoo also is part owner in the company and have a voice in the entire process besides benefit from the sale of their beans. As a result, some members of Kuapo Kokoo have been reinvesting their premiums from the fair trade operation into their community through the building of wells and supporting schools and health clinics, according to Lutheran World Relief, which got into fair trade coffee in 1996. They expanded by adding partnerships with native crafts people to find markets for handcrafts. On the U.S. end of things, Lutheran churches are able to carry out fund-raisers with coffee, chocolate and crafts . Coffee fair trade groups have had some success in getting giants like Starbucks to purchase fair trade coffee. In October 2000, Starbucks, the worlds largest specialty coffee chain, introduced whole bean fair-trade certified coffee at the more than 2,300 stores it had at the time. Starbucks reports buying 4.8 million pounds of certified fair trade coffee in fiscal year 2004 and 11.5 million pounds in 2005. Starbucks calls itself the largest buyer of certified fair trade coffee in North America, with 10 percent of the global market. Much of that can be credited to aggressive campaigns by groups like Global Exchange and other consumer groups. Coffee is said to be the second most valuable world-traded commodity after oil, so the stakes are high. Organized religious groups have been successful over the years in grape boycotts and the 30-year boycott against the Nestle Company for sale and promotion of baby formula in the Third World as an alternative to breast-feeding, which leads to unintended consequences. Voting with ones wallet is often the most effective way to bring about change. Faith communities can provide useful forums to learn how and where to do that.

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