Bitter feelings over coffee bean prices

By Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff, 11/18/2003

In Dean Cycon's mind, the low prices that US coffee roasters pay to struggling farmers amount to a lot more than a hill of beans. That's why, from his small coffee company in the Central Massachusetts town of Orange, Cycon is roiling the trendy world of upscale coffee sellers with allegations of hypocrisy and exploitation of impoverished growers around the globe.

It's a fight in which Cycon's company, Dean's Beans, took out a full-page magazine ad that asked liberal icon Paul Newman, without consulting him, to pressure coffee roasters such as Vermont-based Green Mountain Coffee to buy more beans at higher "fair trade" prices.

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