European consumers have been at the forefront of the fair trade movement since it was founded in Holland in 1988. Consumer recognition of the fair trade label is 92 percent in Holland, and 58 percent in the UK.

Europe sales of fair trade coffee are much higher than in the United States. Fair trade coffee sales are 7 percent of the UK's ground coffee market and about 5 percent of the market in Switzerland, compared to less than one-tenth of one percent of the U.S. market. Altogether, European consumers purchased $300 million of fair trade coffee last year, selecting from 130 fair trade coffee brands offered in more than 35,000 supermarkets.

Perhaps because they are aware of the legacy of Europe's colonial empires, European consumers are more sensitive to social equity issues, Rice said. To build a fair trade market and movement in the United States, TransFair USA has reinvented the European approach by pursuing new strategies, including placing greater emphasis on the environmental versus social equity benefits of fair trade.

"The market is demanding coffee that is not just socially responsible, but environmentally responsible as well," Rice said. "Most of the roasters that have signed up with us ask for fair trade organic coffee – not just fair trade coffee – they want to put the two concepts together."

Most of the coffee grown on traditional Latin American farms is shaded by a tree canopy that also provides habitat for birds and other wildlife. "Small farmers tend to be the best stewards of the land," Rice notes. "Eighty-five percent of all our farmers are chemical-free – that is, they don't use chemical pesticides or fertilizers – and they grow under the shade of the canopy."

Traditional shade coffee is one of the most biodiverse agricultural systems in the world. Coffee farm forests help save wintering habitat for migratory songbirds that spend summers in the United States and Canada, including the wood thrush, Baltimore oriole, ruby-throated hummingbird, and American redstart eastern.

Coffee farm forests protect the soil from erosion, aid in pest control, fix nitrogen, and provide mulch for natural fertilizer. And they help to compensate for the destruction of Latin America's rain forests.

Unfortunately, when coffee farmers can't get a decent price for their harvest, many are forced to sell their farms to nearby estate owners. Large coffee estates have been the engine driving escalating deforestation.

During the past 20 years, about 40 percent of the 6.9 million acres planted for shade-grown coffee from Mexico to Colombia have been converted to open fields of higher-yielding, faster-growing, sun-loving coffee varieties. The loss of shade-grown coffee farms totals 69 percent in Columbia, 40 percent in Costa Rica, 20 percent in Guatemala, and 17 percent in Mexico.

Buying fair trade coffee supports organic farming on the smaller, traditional farms. More than 90 percent of the coffees that TransFair USA certified last year were also certified as organic.

Traditional farmers tend to use organic methods "because they are just too poor to buy the chemicals," Rice noted. "What we are trying to do is turn a necessity into a virtue, and encourage those farmers to take the extra step and actually get certified as organic – since they are already what I would call 'de facto' or 'passive' organic."

Once certified as organic, coffee farmers receive a 15-cent-per-pound premium that is built into the fair trade floor price. "We've built in a powerful incentive for farmers to make that extra leap and get certified as organic," Rice said. "Fair trade farmers around the world are currently producing roughly half of the world's supply of organic coffee. So fair trade has been one of the forces that is creating a market and expanding the supply of organic coffee."