Fourteen people were found dead in the Arizona desert in early June, after one of the party's survivors flagged down a federal immigration officer to beg for water.

The group was composed of illegals--Mexican citizens crossing into the US illegally to work for meager pay under often miserable conditions, thousands of miles from home. Things must be pretty bad at home to inspire that kind of desperate effort.

Underscoring just how bad things are, six of those fourteen dead were coffee farmers from Veracruz state. Farmers who left their prime coffee growing land to look for work because, at a record low of 56 cents per pound on the export market, it costs more to grow the coffee than a farmer can get. "An even lower price is reaching the farmer in many cases--around 20-30 cents," according to Jeremy Simer of Transfair USA, an organization involved in promoting "fair trade" coffee.

Here at home, the coffee flows in a ceaseless flood of lattes and frappacinos, tidily iced and foamed and dolloped into a maelstrom of liquid indulgence. Meanwhile coffee farmers are dying of thirst and dehydration in the deserts of Arizona.

There's a coffee glut on the world market. Overproduction fueled by mechanized, chemical, monoculture agribusiness. The coffee corporations consolidate and extinguish small farms and the local biodiversity under the same unrolling carpet. Tree-filled, plant and animal rich, small coffee farms are replaced with the sterile sunblasted monotony of the factory farm. Communities and their local economies are disrupted. Farmers are displaced. We pay ever more tax dollars to increase "enforcement" and "interdiction" at the border. And the price of a shot of espresso keeps going up.

What's needed is a stable, livable price floor for coffee beans on the world market. A price that sustains small farms, thereby protecting the local ecology, economy, and structures. A price that keeps families together. A price that still allows the roasters and coffee shops of the world to make a fair profit. That "fair trade" price floor, representing a living wage, is about $1.26 per pound, according to Transfair.

That's the price that the farmer has to receive for the final product to be truly considered fair trade. That is to say, responsible coffee. Coffee that does not contribute to community disintegration, habitat destruction, and more needless deaths in the Arizona desert--or anywhere else, for that matter. The crisis of the Veracruz farmers is faced by small coffee farmers everywhere. As corporate control of production and distribution is consolidated, misery is disseminated. We barely hear about deaths of marginal farmers that happen in our own country, let alone South America, Indonesia, and Africa. We do see a lot of promotional campaigns for fancy coffee drinks.

Transfair USA is working to promote fair trade coffee by providing a worldwide standard of certification and labeling of fair trade coffee. Its role is as "a non-profit monitoring organization which certifies that participating traders are following fair trade guidelines."

Associated with the international Fair Labeling Organization, based in Europe, Transfair USA is part of a collaboration to establish an international standard for fair trade labeling.

Coffee is Transfair USA's first product line. And Seattle is a key component in their effort because of "coffee's popularity here, its significance to the region, and local concern about global economic issues."

Transfair, along with Equal Exchange and a handful of other organizations, represents the other side of the "Battle of Seattle." One moment it was about stopping the WTO in its tracks. The work continues through fostering alternative trade networks, strengthening communities of resistance, and building links between the human beings that produce the goods and the human beings that buy the retail products.

Transfair maintains a register of independent growers, including a large contingent of cooperatives. "The farmers must meet various criteria including democratic organization; organic farming strategies; and commitment to a high quality product." In addition, farmers pay a fee to Transfair based on the amount of coffee sold. In return, farmers are "guaranteed" a minimum price of $1.26 per pound. If the world price rises above this minimum, growers will get a 5 cent per pound premium over the market price.

Importers and Roasters who want to put the Transfair label on their coffee agree to a number of standards in addition to paying a fair price. They provide some "credit to farmers against future sales, helping farmers stay out of debt to local coffee coyotes or middlemen, who charge usurious rates of interest." They also agree to pay an additional premium for organic coffee, reducing the advantage of chemical subsidies. The roasters and importers sign on for "long-term trade relationships with producer groups thereby cutting out middlemen and bringing greater commercial stability to an extremely unstable market." After all the steps along the way have been monitored and approved by Transfair, roasters pay a 10 cents per pound licensing fee and can put the label on their coffee.

Transfair USA isn't the only label carrying coffee that can be said to be fair trade. Cafe Mam, Zapatista Coffee, Kailani, and numerous other independent roasters, dedicated solely to fair trade and organics, offer their own fair trade coffees. But these are primarily individual efforts, focused around specific connections between roasters and growing communities.

The rationale behind Transfair's large scale labeling effort lies in the 170 million pounds of fair trade qualified coffee produced in 2000, of which only 30 million pounds was sold under fair trade conditions. That's about 18%. That leaves a lot of room for growth in the conscious consumption segment of the market.

The farmers are producing, Transfair is busily certifying and labeling, with 88 importers and roasters signed on so far. The corporate chain cafes have signed on under pressure, and carry the beans, but they seem less than entirely enthusiastic. They carry one choice of fair trade labeled beans, but don't have any on tap. Tully's, at least, will make a press pot of fair trade, but it's two big cups worth and it takes a minute to brew, so bring a friend.

That's what it's going to take. "Consumer demand," as they call it, or you could call it "strategic purchasing."

Coffee, as one of the most valuable traded commodities in the world, worth billions of dollars annually, and employing some 20 million farmers, is well positioned as a starting point for initiating sustainable fair trade networks based on connections and exchange between producers and consumers.

As a "specialty" product, coffee comes equipped with a full range of lifestyle references and reminders to pause, reflect and get grounded. Fair trade is a natural progression, with it's emphasis on showing the authentic faces of the farmers, often community activists, and always active communities--communities taking back their own sufficiency, rebuilding their own infrastructure. Safeguarding all our futures. Strengthening the front lines of the fight against faceless corporate globalization and the depredations of greed.

The coffee trade connects the plush world of upscale Seattle with the base level of production, borne on the backs of farmers and ecosystems in the "Global South." Fair Trade coffee is putting faces on this trade, at both ends of the pipeline.

Transfair USA can be found at www.transfairusa.org, or see this issue's Activist Calendar for information on Seattle area Transfair activities, featuring meetings with visiting coffee farmers from two Nicaraguan cooperatives.