Coffee Vs Mexican Culture Essay

Almost everyone drinks coffee. Most people view it as part of their basic needs. It is normally the first to be consumed whenever a day starts. It is commonly believed that a cup of coffee makes someone brighter and so able to perform his or her duties actively. This is therefore my chosen product. The following sections describes the path the product takes from the producer to reach me as well as to another consumer in another country which will be Brazil in this case.

Coffee is a beverage that is globally consumed, but also a product that has different values in different parts of the world. The role coffee plays in society differs around the world, from the farmers who grew the crops to the people who constantly consume them. Social theoretical perspectives are capable of showing the different roles coffee has in different societies. Symbolic interactionism, functionalism, and Marxism are three theories which show coffee’s role sociologically. These theories show how coffee affects people physically, how it affects them emotionally, how it leads them to have interactions, how it connects different parts of society, and how it’s economically controlled by a select few.

A commodity is a raw material or primary agricultural product that can be bought and sold. The market treats it as equipment or nearly so with no regard to who produced it. The original producer does not make the “big” money from the good that has become a commodity demanded by consumers. A commodity’s supply and demand is part of one universal market like corn, or wheat. A stereo is something that would not be considered a commodity. Other things are important about a stereo not that it is just a stereo but what brand and quality is in consideration when purchasing a stereo. Demand for one type might be much larger than the demand for another. This is not the case with commodities; they lose differentiation across their supply base. An

We ate at a restaurant there in which the owner made ox carts. He did all of the woodwork using hydroelectricity with a waterwheel in the back. They were all also hand painted and hand carved pieces. It was very beautiful. We finally got to Turriabla that night. The next day we went to the college and botanical gardens of CATIE. In the botanical gardens we got to try all of the different fruits grown in Costa Rica. They are all very good and different tasting. Even the mangos and pineapples taste so much better there. Now that we are back I dislike the ones here. One example of something we tried there was called the miracle fruit. It made anything you ate afterwards that was sour taste sweet and it actually worked. We toured the coffee plantation there as well as the college campus and had more traditional Costa Rican food in the cafeteria there. Finally, in Turriabla we went to a fruit market and an ice cream shop and practiced our Spanish. We then prepared for our third stop.

Many people immigrate to Costa Rica for the education and literacy rate there are extraordinary. There’s Many goods in Costa Rica such as Coffee Beans, Bananas, Lumber and Sugar and they are all exported from Costa Rica. The people from Costa Rica depend on fruit, mining, lumber and other resources the country has adapted to the area by building houses with area conditioning and bridges for areas that are separated by bodies of water they have also build dams that provide energy and big factories for producing mass production products they also have airlines, airplanes, the postal mail services and etc. They have also evolved in communication because back then they could only communicate through person and now they communicate through email, text, and

Coffee is usually served at breakfast and during traditional coffee breaks in the afternoon, usually around 3:00 pm. It has traditionally been brewed in a native Costa Rican drip brew device called a chorreador.

This is a brief overview on the diverse geography of Costa Rica. From its beautiful mountains, its dense forestry, to its beautiful beaches, it is a place that all should scribble on their bucket

From the New York Times the article: “Coffee’s Economics, Rewritten by Farmers”, illustrates how Kenneth Lander, a lawyer in Monroe, moved with his family to a coffee farm in San Rafael de Abangares, Costa Rica. Mr. Lander was looking for a more balanced life between work and his lifestyle. Mr. Lander started growing his own coffee from 12 acres of land that yielded 6,000 pounds of specialty-grade coffee beans a year. But in 2008, his financials started to dwindle, and he quickly struggled to support his family. Farmers in his similar financial situation usually turned to organizations like Fairtrade International who typically bailed them out, but for Mr. Lander, he sought out innovative ideas. He began to roast his own beans and sell them

In my travels of the world I have found myself immersed in many cultures and varieties of ethnicity; I have been very fortunate to live in a day and age where such communication and experience is possible in one lifetime. I have seen La Cathedral de Notre Dame, the Statue of Liberty, the home of Da Vinci, and so many more wonderfully spiritual and historic monuments. Yet still I can say with the utmost certainty that no location has left such a lasting impact on my soul as the quaint, simple country of Costa Rica. Although many places have penetrated me with a sense of what the majestic earth and her inhabitants are capable of and have forced me to question whether or not anything is beyond the grasp of human ingenuity, none have brought

The documentary Black Gold, is about the world coffee market and an Ethiopian fair trade cooperative. Ethiopia being the birthplace of coffee is the largest producer of coffee in the world, producing some of the highest quality of coffee beans in the world, like Harar, Yuban and Sidamo types of coffee. The significant problems pointed out in this documentary show what is wrong in the global trading system. Mainly, while most of us continue have our lattes and specialty coffees, the amount paid to the Ethiopian coffee farmers is so low that a lot of them have been forced to chop down some of their coffee fields and rely on other crops to help them survive. The Ethiopian people are malnourished; they have no clean water, no healthcare, and no schools for their families. As quoted in the film, “They are living hand to mouth”.

Coffee, the bean we love. To many it is known as the magic elixir, brain juice, or nectar of the gods, while others see it as the devil in a cup. America is a country that is obsessed with its coffee, now more than ever before. Although coffee has spanned generations, the craze did not exist like it does today. According to anthropologist William Roseberry of UBC, coffee was on the decline in the 1960’s and hit an all time low in the 90’s with only half the country drinking about a cup a day (D’Costa). However, with coffee being the world’s most commonly traded commodity, second to crude oil, much money is at stake when people stop drinking it. Thus the coffee empire was rebuilt, coffee revamped, and redefined to suit the needs of the “me

Costa Rica had the perfect conditions of soil and climate for coffee to flourish. In the 1800s, coffee production was encouraged by the government. Coffee became an important crop to the region. It became the biggest export and overtook other crops in 1829. The money made off of coffee plantations were a big part in the countries development. The profits were used to build Costa Rica’s first railroad. The “Ferrocarril al Atlántico” transported coffee beans to the Atlantic Coast, which would then be transported to

     One unusual aspect of Costa Rica is that the country has no army and instead of a national hero being a general it is a young barefoot campesino (farmer). Costa Rica prides on the idea that they have gained through evolution what other countries have

Finally, global economic issues have an immense influence on the world of coffee. Throughout history there has been a pattern that coffee producing countries are economically worse off than those that are consuming the coffee. Pendergrast mentions that “in 1950 the average income in consuming countries was three times that of coffee-growing nations. By the late 1960s it was five times great” (270). With that said, many producing coffee countries were facing endemics and malnourished peoples because workers were receiving absurdly low wages thus placing them into poverty and human suffering (271). Specifically, although 90 percent of El Salvador’s exports consisted of coffee in the 1930s, they agonized from “‘low wages, incredible filth…[under] conditions in fact not far removed from slavery’” (168). Global economic issues of these producing countries lead to dictators easily gaining power such as those in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Honduras (170). Not only was politics a matter that resulted from global economic issues, “the high interest rates from financial institutions and price [squeezes]” lead to the economic struggle of farmers like those from Colombia due to

Costa can only be as successful as the plan it implements. Saving the world from mediocre coffee and unsustainable practices are goals that must be attained.