Do a good deed when you get your caffeine fix today. Sip a cup of organic fair trade coffee, and you help to support a farmer while you promote organics.

Many Pittsburghers are familiar with La Prima Espresso, the popular coffee bar and sidewalk cafe on 21st Street in the Strip District. The business end of the operation, the roaster, is in the long terminal building on the Allegheny River side of Smallman Street. La Prima recently received Pennsylvania Certified Organic certification. After owner Sam Patti applied for the certification, it took 18 months to get the certificate in hand.

"We're a small-batch coffee roaster. That's the coffee version of a microbrewery," he says. "We've had organic coffees all along. But that's different from being certified. We must follow strict rules about storing, roasting and cleaning."

Once the green organic coffee beans are delivered to the dock at the Smallman Street operation, the sacks are stored separately from conventional coffee. Designated grinders and scoops are used. The area around the roaster is maintained with certified products.

"When it's time to roast a batch of organic beans, we purge the roaster of conventional beans," Mr. Patti adds.

La Prima's organic coffee is also Fair Trade. Many food products we buy in the United States are grown by farmers in developing countries -- often farmers working for extremely low pay. Fair Trade Certified coffee means that farm workers around the world are paid a fair price, there is direct trade between producers and importers and sustainable farming practices are used. La Prima also collaborates with Building New Hope -- a Pittsburgh based nonprofit organization -- that imports organic coffee from worker-owned cooperatives in northern Nicaragua and El Salvador.

Twenty six percent of La Prima's coffee is now organic and fair trade. "We are slowly increasing those numbers," Mr. Patti says. "In five years, we may be up to 75 or 80 percent."

La Prima's organic fair trade coffees are sold on the Carnegie Mellon University campus, at Pick-Me-Up in Lawrenceville, 61C in Squirrel Hill and at all 10 Crazy Mocha outlets in the Pittsburgh area.

"When the Pennsylvania Certified organization people came for inspection, they asked me, 'Why do you want to do this?' " says Mr. Patti. "I had to think before I answered. I said, at my house we love to cook and food is a precious thing. We get our weekly farm produce box from farmer Don Kretchsmann. I belong to Slow Food. And I care about sustainability for myself, my business and my community."