Donate money, write letters, call constituents, boycott business, wear buttons, hold protests, paint signs and buy fair trade. Activism as a lifestyle can mean simply replacing the products you buy with socially conscious versions. As the cliché says, money talks. Fair trade allows consumers to speak their minds in the green language that corporations understand. Local businesses such as Lola Savannah let the public to do just that in the case of coffee, the second most traded commodity in the world.

Facing the lowest prices in a century, coffee growers in Central and South America have turned to cultivating illegal drugs or have abandoned their farms altogether, deserting a crop that is no longer profitable. Since 1988, world coffee prices have dropped sharply, from $1.20 per pound to today’s paltry 30 or 40 cents. With costs of approximately 80 cents per pound to grow coffee, farmers operating within this framework do so at a loss.

This is where fair trade comes in. Fair trade has played a critical role in the lives of coffee growers since the collapse of the market price for this crop. In return for practicing environmentally sustainable agriculture, fair trade coffee growers receive approximately $1.29 per pound, allowing farmers to invest in their families and communities.

The idea of fair trade is more than fifty years old, but higher demand has now pushed it into the mainstream market – witness the new espresso products at Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbuck’s Fair Trade blend. Even so, fair trade items seldom make it onto the shelves and must be sought out by conscientious consumers. In Houston, fine coffee and tea distributor Lola Savannah offers ten different types of fair trade coffee.

Michael Spencer of Lola Savannah explained how his company obtains fair trade coffee: "The program in which we participate is with TransFair USA (a nonprofit certifying body), where they do third-party verification of fair trade. It used to be, the grower would go to a co-op and they would get whatever price (the market gave them). Now with fair trade, if (the coffee is) organic and it fits the qualifications, then they give that lot of coffee a number, and the co-op gives them a guaranteed price. Then the coffee is marked and shipped by an importer, and the importer reports the purchase to TransFair. When we purchase our coffee from the importer, we report the number to TransFair."

Lola Savannah’s main clients are regional, for example Central Market and local restaurants such as Star Pizza. According to Spencer, fair trade coffee, all of which is organic, actually tastes better when grown in the shade, an agricultural method termed "bird friendly" because it gives migratory birds a place to rest.

Although bird-friendly approval is relatively new, the preservation of forest habitats even in the case of coffee growers is not. Until the 1970s, cultivators farmed coffee under a forest overstory; but then, in an effort to increase production and combat the spread of an African fungus, growers switched to higher yielding varieties that do better in direct sunlight. This required clear-cutting, a devastating practice for the environment as well as for the people.

Shade-grown coffee provides non-coffee products financially critical to small growers. Trees can be used as firewood, for example, or as an additional source of income. Also, forest farming does not expose workers to the wide range of chemicals required on technified farms, where coffee bushes are grown in direct sunlight.

Instead of poisoning and depleting the soil, the cultivation of coffee according to the agroforestry model improves soil by using nitrogen-fixing legumes. Preserving the forest in its natural state also provides habitat to animals that depend on it for survival. This is vital in the case of migratory birds, whose habitats have been disappearing from the earth at a rapid rate due to deforestation.

"We try to have a social conscience," says Spencer. "This is not a mainstream product . . . when someone goes and gets a fair price for their product; it’s tangible, you can see it in the estates. This is more sustainable."

Lola Savannah can be reached at www.lolasavannah.com or by calling (713) 222-9800.