The Dark Truth About Coffee

Just try to imagine a morning without a hot cup of coffee between your hands, the warm ceramic of the mug (or cardboard if it’s in a to-go cup) soothing to the surface of your palms.

Can’t do it, can you?

Some mornings, it seems that coffee is an integral part of the day; we can’t start without it. But how often do you sit and think about the coffee itself. I’m not talking about the steaming, brown liquid sitting in the cup in front of you, per se. Rather, where did the beans that made that coffee come from?

Chances are, the beans that made that very coffee sitting inside of your smiley-faced mug, or perhaps “Best Mom/Dad/Boss/Friend Ever” mug, has traveled farther in its short lifetime than you have in yours. Most coffee beans available in North America were grown and farmed in South and Latin America, meaning that once it is farmed, it has to be shipped up to whichever city the computer screen that your reading this off of is located, wherever that may be.

Think about this: how far away is, say, Brazil (a leading coffee producing country) from where you are sitting right now?

Now, think about this: how much did you pay for that cup of coffee or the beans, if you brewed it yourself?

Just thinking about how much air travel is these days (although, chances are, the beans arrive via cargo ship), the cost to bring those beans here must have cost quite a bit and we’re only paying, what, like $1 – $1.50 per cup? Something here doesn’t seem to add up right. Yes, I know that they come in bulk, but someone here, and at a dollar a cup I know that it’s not me, is at the losing end of this bargain.

Here are some not-so-fun facts about how the coffee business really works:

• While we’re spending as much as three or four dollars on a cup of specialty coffee (*cough* Starbucks *cough*, note, by no means is that a bash to Starbucks, personally, I’m hooked on the junk), farmers in countries where coffee is farmed (i.e. Colombia and Brazil) are getting paid as little as two dollars per day.
• Large food companies that own the means of production to bring coffee beans from the countries in which the coffea plant (the plant on which coffee beans grow) take advantage of the fact that that there are little, if any, rules and regulations when it comes to wage laws.
• When very few companies monopolize the coffee industry, since there is little-to-no competition, they can pay the coffee farmers whatever they want and charge the paying consumers whatever they want, thus minimizing costs while maximizing profits at the expense of the coffee farmers.
• Because of their incredibly low wages, many coffee farmers are forced to live in extreme poverty, meaning that their families have to suffer.
• The price of coffee in North America is declining, meaning that the amount of money that these farmers get will eventually be even lower than it is today unless something is done to regulate their wages to ensure fair pay.