Farmer & Chef South

We’re not talking funnel cakes; learn how two Asheville eateries source fairer than fair trade coffee and cacao. Critics of the local food movement have always painted it as an all-or-nothing deal: To be a locavore, you have to shun bananas, pineapples, and the list of tasty tropicals goes on. Of course, that isn’t true. Thank goodness! We Ashevillians are local foodies to be sure, but just try and tell us we can’t have coffee and chocolate. Seriously. Try.

 That doesn’t mean we’ll accept beans grown unsustainably and without transparency. Enter fair trade. Loosely defined, a fair trade product...