Central American Coffee

What am I picking for you in Costa Rica?
Export crops in the Third World are frequently still grown on large estates owned by a small number of large land owners as in Guatemala, where one percent of the population owns 80 percent of the land. But in Costa Rica, most small-scale farmers grow coffee.

Some export crops, such as coffee and cocoa, are now grown on small family farms. The average grower in Costa Rica, for example in this photo, owns five hectares (12.5 acres), from which the family ears US$1,000 per year. To survive, many small-scale producers are now growing organic coffee; it fetches a higher price (up to 20% more) and conserves the land. Coffee production is intensive crop; drying the green coffee beans in the tropical sun is distinctive. Over 20 million people make a living of sorts from coffee. The stocks of coffee have shifted in recent years from coffee-exporting countries to consuming countries; thus, allowing consuming countries to determine and benefit from higher coffee prices rather than the exporting countries -- check the data.

Coffee was first domesticated in Ethiopia in the 6th century, where it is still grown between 3,250 and 6,500 feet. The Ottoman Turks occupied Yemen in 1536 and soon thereafter coffee was exported throughout the Turkish empire, through the port of Mocha. Pilgrims took the plant to India where the Dutch carried it to their colonies in Java (part of Indonesia today). The French took a single coffee tree to Martinique in the Caribbean and from there coffee spread to the highlands of Mexico and Central and South America. By 1700, London had over 2,000 coffeehouses, occupying more premises and paying more rent than any other trade! In contrast to the continent, women were prohibited from London coffeehouses. By the late 18th century, tea had become the preferred beverage in England only. The British East India Company supplied the British and the American colonies with tea. During the American Revolution, it was unpatriotic to drink tea -- coffee was the alternative drink.

Coffee has historically been grown under shade trees. Since the 1970s, more coffee has been grown under full sun resulting in higher yields. With shade trees being cut down, song birds have less habitat. In Mexico, song bird species have declined by 50 percent (Sources: National Geographic, September 1998; Mark Pendergrast, Uncommon Grounds).

The top ten coffee producers are shown in yellow. Source: NGS, see their coffee web site. Optional readings: 1) history of coffee prices, who benefits, who pays, impacts in coffee-producing countries -- article.
2) Latin American coffee production, including a map.

Examine the distribution of the money from the final price of coffee. Producers in the South are paid only a tiny part of the final price. A few corporations in the North dominate most of the market.
Read how different groups in the USA are supporting Socially and/or Environmentally Consciously Cultivated Coffee, SecC, pronounced "sexy."

Answer:
coffee (the green/yellow berries are dried in the producing areas and later, roasted in the consuming markets -- best when roasted right in a coffee shop!)

The culture of drinking coffee. The first coffeehouses were opened in 1554 in Constantinople (Istanbul today). These houses became known as the "schools of the cultured." Similarly, when coffeehouses were opened later in Western Europe, they too were the meeting grounds for the avant-garde. In 1683, after the Turkish siege of Vienna, coffee arrived in Europe. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, USA coffeehouses (serving regular American-style coffee, what the Japanese call "soft [weak] coffee") were associated with the counter culture: hippies and folk protest music (against the Vietnam war and materialistic culture in general). In the 1990s, coffee was again making a comeback but this time more as a , up-scale (expensive), caffeine-fix (in the European forms of espresso, cappuccino, etc.) than as a comprehensive alternative culture.

Optional: read Leah Hager Cohen's Glass, Paper, Beans -- the myth, lore, history, and geography of three staples of modern life: coffee, the glass it comes in, and a newspaper. It describes the unseen world where trade, fetishization, manufacture, and the labor of real people who create these common things of modern life. Each item is traced through the lives of three families in New Brunswick, Canada (logging), Ohio, USA (glass), and Oaxaca, Mexico (coffee). The sections on the coffee growers of Oaxaca are particularly good.

Created by Ingolf Vogeler on 18 May 1996; last revised on 07 March 2005.


		Examine the distribution of the money from the final price of coffee. Producers in the South are paid only a tiny part of the final price. A few corporations in the North dominate most of the market. Read how different groups in the USA are supporting Socially and/or Environmentally Consciously Cultivated Coffee, SecC, pronounced "sexy."