Coffee production may not seem as fiery a topic as the Vietnam War and racial discrimination were in the 1960s and 1970s.

But coffee  specifically, paying coffee-growers acceptable wages  is providing ammunition for one of the most persistent advocacy campaigns this year at Kansas University.

“The issues are more subtle and complex than they were in the ’60s,” said Sarah Hoskinson, co-coordinator of the KU Green Party. “I think a lot of people think we don’t have enough to occupy our time.”

The KU Greens established the Lawrence Fair Trade Coffee Commission last fall. Fair trade coffee and lobbying for a state moratorium on the death penalty are the top priority issues for the KU Greens this year.

Since fall, commission members have sponsored a coffee shop crawl and protests at local coffee shops.

The next round in the activism will be Sunday, when the group is host to a Fair Trade Coffee Expo.

The event is from noon to 3 p.m. at the Kansas Union Ballroom.

Like the living wage debate locally, club members want to provide guaranteed rates for coffee producers.

Fair-trade coffee is purchased from democratically organized farmer cooperatives that pay farmers living wages. Farmers are guaranteed $1.26 per pound for their coffee.

Other farmers, who sell their coffee to middlemen, make as little as 38 cents per pound, according to the KU Greens.

Laura Adams, one of the commission’s organizers, said Aimee’s Coffee House, 1025 Mass., and Henry’s, 11 E. Eighth St., started selling fair-trade coffee when the protests began.

La Prima Tazza, 638 Mass., Bourgeois Pig, 6 E. Ninth St., Milton’s Coffee and Wine, 920 Mass., and the Community Mercantile, 901 Iowa, already sold fair-trade coffee, she said.

Though coffee is the group’s focus for now  coffee is the second-most exported product after oil  Adams said it’s only a starting place for a variety of products.

“It’s just the idea of socially responsible capitalism,” she said. “It’s helping (coffee-growers) help themselves. It’s not just giving them money.”