Fueled by a popular taste for lattes and cappuccinos and a growing consumer-awareness campaign, the fair-trade coffee movement has tens of thousands of Americans asking for a scoop of social justice with their morning coffee.

Fair-trade coffee - beans purchased from small farmers outside the US at well above the slumping market price - is hot in the java world: The amount of fair-trade coffee sold in the US nearly doubled last year.

But as the movement has expanded in recent years to include such brands as Starbucks, Green Mountain, Procter & Gamble, and Dunkin' Donuts, dissension is percolating among some smaller roasters. They claim that the large firms, which buy only a small percentage of fair-trade beans, are turning it into a marketing ploy rather than an effort to help farmers.

Now a move is underfoot to create a new model where smaller brewers purchasing 100 percent fair-trade coffee hope to distinguish themselves as the real deal among fair traders. The rift demonstrates how some small companies feel cheated by larger corporations for infringing on their market niche, even when all parties involved insist they are working toward the same goal.

Others say the mainstreaming of the movement has helped the cause.

"If a corporate giant roasts a million pounds of fair-trade coffee in one year, they are still doing far more than some of the smaller 100-percent roasters will in their entire history," stresses Paul Rice, CEO of TransFair USA, the group that audits the US fair-trade industry.

The fair-trade model seeks to ensure livable wages as well as environmental and cultural sustainability for small farmers in Latin America, Africa, and Asia by establishing a base purchase price of $1.26 per pound - about $.75 more than the current market price. Since TransFair formed in 1998, fair-trade coffee sales in the US have grown exponentially, totaling 19 million pounds last year, according to Mr. Rice.

Several smaller 100-percent fair-trade coffee roasters in the US have broken from the establishment in recent months, claiming they can do more to raise consumer awareness by going it alone.

On Friday, Larry's Beans of North Carolina split from TransFair, the company that holds the US trademark for the term, "Fair Trade Certified." At least three other smaller roasters - Just Coffee, Dean's Beans, and Cafe Campesino - have followed suit. All the details of their new association have yet to be worked out.

"Without people outside the increasingly corporate-friendly TransFair system pushing for the original vision of a better model, [the movement] will be watered down into nothingness," says Matt Earley, cofounder of Just Coffee in Madison, Wis.

Under the current system, chains like Starbucks can call themselves fair-trade friendly by purchasing just 1 to 2 percent of their coffee from certified growers.

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