My example comes from the specialty coffee industry, a $3 billion sector that is taking small, but critical steps towards tackling entrenched social and ecological problems involved in coffee production.

Coffee is big business. Americans alone drink over 400,000,000 cups every day. 20 million people around the world make their living growing, harvesting and supplying the rest of us with all that coffee. Most of those people are laborers or farmers with small plots of land. Some are both. Normally it's a hard life, but these days it’s even worse. Coffee prices for farmers are at an eight-year low, around 62 cents a pound.

Your coffee’s the same. So is the farmer’s work, but their 'paycheck' has been cut in half. Few farmers get even 62 cents. After the exporter, the processor and others take their cuts, a small farmer might not get 30 cents a pound.

A FAIR PRICE FOR THE FARMER
Some farmers will give up, and look for work on the plantations or in the overcrowded cities. Others will try to hold on to their family’s land and probably go into debt. They will hope for better prices at the next harvest, as they and their ancestors have done for generations.

Fortunately there’s another option. It’s called "fair trade." Think of it as a minimum wage safety net for small farmers. When coffee is fairly traded, importers like us buy directly from co-op’s of small farmers, not the elites who normally control coffee exports. And the farmers will always get at least a fair price (currently $1.26 a pound), or the market price, whichever is higher.

But how can paying extra work as a profitable business? First, because we have different goals - and maximizing our profits isn’t one of them. By accepting smaller profits, and recruiting investors who share our values, we have more money available to pay the farmers. Second, it works because consumers go for it. We have found that many people care where their shopping dollars go, and when they know they have an alternative like fair trade, at a fair price, they buy it - literally.

FARMING WITH NATURE
Coffee production and consumption also offer some important ecological choices. Since an area the size of Ohio is used to grow the world's coffee it matters how that land is farmed. Much of the worlds' crop is grown in what some call 'green deserts'. These are places where the native forest has been replaced with endless rows of short coffee trees, dependent upon a toxic cocktail of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. Loss of wildlife habitat, contamination of streams, and pesticide poisonings are all common problems. However, most of the best coffee can grow well without chemicals, especially when planted in a mixed ecosystem that resembles the original forest. The yield per acre from such organic farming is lower, but so are the costs to the farmer. Meanwhile, the coffee trees live longer, soil erosion is less, and the farmer gets a better price thanks to the growing popularity of organic foods. That strong consumer demand in turn allows our company to be both profitable and gentle on the earth.

JUST ONE EXAMPLE
Organic coffee and fair trade coffee are just two examples of how commerce can be combined with a concern for the earth and for fairness. In Europe they have extended fair trade to cocoa, bananas, and sugar. Here at home Americans already buy over seven billions dollars of organic food annually.

In the end I choose to view business as a tool, and not just for the so-called fat cats and old style capitalists. All of us, whether as consumers, investors, or entrepreneurs, can help decide how this tool is used and to what end.

And while the old definition of success may have centered on money and status, a new definition of success can be where everyone - not just me - has enough, and where our work today leaves the earth undiminished for future generations.

Rodney North is the Answer Man for Equal Exchange, Canton, Mass. www.equalexchange.com. For additional information go to www.fairtradefederation.org or www.fairtrade.net.

This article is distributed courtesy the Center for a New American Dream's Syndicated Column Service. For more information about the Center, click on www.newdream.org, or call (877) 68-DREAM.