Guatemalan coffee and fair trade

At church this Sunday, we watched a PowerPoint on our church's recent mission trip to Guatemala, and a few demographic facts framed our understanding of the poverty enveloping the country. In brief, 98% of the population lives on 2% of the land and has no money. Two percent owns 98% of the land and has lots of money, and they use that land to grow coffee. It's the country's largest cash crop and most common means of income (the second most common income - ironically - comes from having relatives working in the US).
So, for what equates to about $1,000 - 2,000 USD a year, most people work the coffee farms so that we can drink the fine coffee at your local Starbucks. The thing is, Starbucks is proud to say that they are "fair trade," meaning that all of their coffees come from plantations that do not use slave labor to harvest the crop. While this is laudable, we're really taking a lot at face value here: I mean, Starbucks just happens to buy from the one plantation in Guatemala that hasn't created a slave-based economy?
It may be so, but we'd never know it; we just sip our coffee, maybe reminding ourselves to look up what the hell "fair trade" means on Wikipedia at work, while we're supposed to be working.
I think we fail to realize the power we have as consumers in a western culture. I'm as guilty as anyone: I probably spend more money on coffee annually than the average Guatemalan makes in a year. But just like the blood diamonds of Africa and the blood rubies of Burma, we have a unique opportunity to prevent such oppressive dynamics to take place.
I know what you're thinking: I'm some bleeding heart that forgets that - outside of those plantations - there are lines of Guatemalans clamoring for those shite jobs like they're the best careers on earth. I'm not saying no more coffee, I'm suggested that coffee-drinkers insist on more specific means of choosing the plantation whose beans they drink of.
Picture this: through a Starbucks' funded investigation, it's found that a plantation wanted to do business with them pays horrible wages, murders coffee thieves unjustly, and sexually exploits the sparse female workers (and this ain't out of line, by the way). So, Starbucks says: double the wages, clean up your act, and pour some of that money back into the local economy instead of being the typical absentee landlord, or you'll have none of our business. Do you think it would happen? Of course it would. That's the luxury of being the multi-billion dollar organization with the money to build an infrastructure - you make the rules.
Keep tuned in and we'll see what Starbucks thinks of the idea when I get in touch with one of their many PR peeps. Until then, maybe at least look up "fair trade" and make sure the local Starbucks lot knows what it means for their company to play fair.