EL ROBLAR, Nicaragua — College activist Matt Bowlby knows more than most consumers about the plight of small-scale coffee farmers. The University of Minnesota senior can reel off all kinds of reasons to promote Fair Trade, a system that guarantees that growers in developing countries are paid enough to support their farms and families.

But on this January morning, as he slips and slides down a muddy mountainside, a basket of coffee berries strapped to his waist, he discovers something he didn't know. Picking coffee, he says, "is more down and dirty than I imagined."

Back in the States, grass-roots organizers like Bowlby are riding a wave of success in their efforts to raise awareness about Fair Trade coffee, which after years of support by students, church groups and environmental activists seems to be going mainstream.

Though most of the $19.2 billion U.S. coffee industry remains flat, the gourmet sector is growing — and Fair Trade sales are growing fastest of all, about 46% a year. And the movement got a major boost in September, when Procter & Gamble agreed to market a Fair Trade blend under its Millstone brand. Activists hope that decision will pressure other corporate giants to follow suit.

In December, Catholic Relief Services announced plans to promote Fair Trade coffee to the nation's 65 million Catholics. And during the weekend, college students converged in Santa Cruz, Calif., for the first meeting of United Students for Fair Trade to galvanize campaigns for coffee, as well as chocolate, tea and other agricultural products.

Their goal is to increase the profile and availability of coffee that is Fair Trade-certified. But even among the most socially conscious coffee drinkers, few have seen the other side of the fair-trade equation.

Today, about 800,000 farmers and their families in about 40 countries benefit from certification, says TransFair USA, a non-profit monitoring group in Oakland that ensures both buyers and growers meet standards set by Fair Trade certifiers. With momentum in their favor, Fair Trade coffee growers in this region of northern Nicaragua are inviting supporters to their campos, or fields, to learn about coffee from the ground up.

Bowlby, 22, visited here as part of a program coordinated by Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based human rights organization. For $400 apiece plus travel expenses, each of the 11 participants, most of them college students, spent 12 days with a host family to help withla repela, or last pick of the season.

Most days, they pulled on rubber boots and joined farmers by 6 a.m. to pick, then wash, dry and sort the beans. In their off time they would go to church, perhaps, or learn to make tortillas or teach card games to the families.

"Living in the campo was simple, yet amazingly rich in love, laughter and life," says Luanna Peterson, 26, who is pursuing a master's degree in ecological agriculture at New College of California's campus in Santa Rosa. "I drink coffee every day and don't put a face to it. Now I can put a face to it."

The benefits are real

One of those faces is Segundo Membreño, who with his wife, Sonia Garcia Flores, and their three children lives on 11½ acres in Los Pinos, one of many small communities tucked into the Dariense mountain range.

A coffee grower since the 1980s and a Fair Trade farmer since 1997, he has seen good years and bad. This season's harvest is better than most, he says one night after a dinner of beans and rice, speaking Spanish through an interpreter. If all goes as planned, he expects to sell 18 100-pound bags, or quintales, nearly double last year's 10. In U.S. dollars, he would net $1,980.

For Membreño, Fair Trade means not only "a better price for my coffee" but also three meals a day, clothes for his children and occasional trips to visit his wife's family. And with this year's heftier revenue, he hopes to pay off debts and bring electrical power into the home he built 11 years ago.

"I would like someday to construct a house of bricks instead of boards," Membreño says, his face bathed in candlelight. But for now, "electricity is a goal we can accomplish."

The benefits of a successful growing season do not flow equally, though, whether measured by income or by hope. In a barrio not far from Membreño's farm, pickers for local haciendas — large-scale plantations that produce conventional coffee — tell visitors their earnings average just 35 cordobas a day. That's about $2, less than the price of a tall latté at Starbucks.

Now, with the high season wrapping up, they are entering what they call the time of silence, when there's no coffee to pick.

"Every single one of us is poor," one worker, Gregorio Lanzas Garcia, says in Spanish. "One wants to change, but how much can you do? We suck on air, and sometimes the air has no nutrients."

Seeing the effect firsthand

For Carolyn Fisher, 26, a graduate student in anthropology at City University of New York, a walk through that barrio spoke volumes about the results of fair trade. Most homes were built with plastic, mud and sticks, with families of six or more crowded into plots no bigger than the dorm rooms found in older buildings.

"The kids ... seemed to be skinnier than those in my family," Fisher says. And there was no place to grow beans or chayote, or to raise chickens or pigs — extra sources of income for many Fair Trade farmers. Fair Trade, she says, "is the difference between not having enough to eat and having enough to eat."

Coffee is the second-most-traded commodity after oil, and it is Nicaragua's primary export crop. It once was regulated by the International Coffee Organization (ICO), whose member countries agreed to ensure that prices paid to growers would remain relatively high and stable.

But since 1989, when the USA withdrew from the ICO and the pact fell apart, coffee has been traded on an open market. Technological advances in coffee production, meanwhile, along with the establishment of coffee farms in Vietnam and other developing countries, have contributed to a world oversupply of coffee.

That means that even as grocers or coffee shops charge more for a pound or a cup, the prices paid to farmers aren't going up — in fact, they have hit some of the lowest levels in 30 years. In 1999, the price per pound was $1.40; it fell to 42 cents in 2001 and now hovers between 50 cents and 70 cents. TransFair USA says it costs about 80 cents a pound for small-scale farmers to produce a pound of coffee.

In Nicaragua, many farmers who acquired land in the 1980s as part of the Sandinista government's reforms have abandoned their property or sold it dirt cheap, no longer able to earn a living.

But others stuck it out. Membreño credits his ability to persevere to his growing involvement in a network of farming cooperatives. In the mid-1990s, he and several other farmers founded an organic cooperative after learning how to grow coffee plants without using the pesticides that gave them rashes and burned their eyes. In 1997, that cooperative joined the newly formed Organization of Northern Coffee Cooperatives, a larger Fair Trade organization that represents nearly 1,900 farmers in the region.

Through that association, Fair Trade-certified growers are guaranteed at least $1.26 a pound — Membreño gets $1.41 a pound because his coffee is organically grown. Of that, he nets $1.10; the rest goes to the certification process, transportation and other fees and co-op membership dues.

The benefits extend beyond better coffee rates, though. Cooperatives have, for instance, donated books to local schools, created scholarships and provided uniforms for local baseball teams.

And many cooperative members have access to low-interest financing, professional workshops and social programs. A few years ago, it built a beneficio, a dry mill where coffee is processed, and a cupping facility, through which many farmers for the first time could taste their coffee as a consumer would.

Now, to help farmers market their coffee and to bring in another source of revenue, the cooperatives organization is developing a tourism project, working with organizations such as Global Exchange to bring groups to the area.

In return for lodging and meals, each host family receives a fee, as do trained guides who accompany guests to sites such as nearby waterfalls or the mill.

In addition, 20% of the revenue goes to participating communities, whose members determine how money will be invested. In most cases, health care and education are priorities.

"We're just starting from nothing," says farmer Pedro Pablo Valenzuela, a community leader in Los Pinos. But beyond the extra income, the effort could become one more way to spread the word about Fair Trade coffee. "Like the saying goes," he says, "grain by grain, the hen fills her belly."