Coffee And Poverty

Coffee is “a major cash crop of Chagga farmers” (p. xi) and a large portion of the economic profit, but what happens when drought and coffee berry disease hit the Chagga society. Environmental problems such as these became a large problem facing many people of the Chagga. Much of the rich farm land on Mt. Kilimanjaro inhabited coffee trees and therefore leaving less space for individual gardens. When coffee berry disease and drought affected the production of Tanzania’s major export, people such as the Chagga were left with a food shortage, therefore introducing another environmental problem: famine. Although families could maintain home gardens with the small amount of land available, it rarely was enough to satisfy the whole family. Yet Chagga farmers were not permitted to convert coffee farming land into land for personal farming. Another large cause of sickness came from the bacteria ridden water. Women did not boil the water upon giving it to their young. A lot of people have heard “don’t drink the water in Mexico”. Well this was a similar situation

Why was it so important to Europe 's development that many people 's beverage of choice switched from alcohol to coffee?

The growth of the coffee industry is expected to keep growing even become larger in the near future. Without new innovation the industry would never grow. There have been some tiny and some large changes in the coffee world that in toll add up to a new experience that many cannot refuse to be a part of. One of the goals of many coffee shops is to make the customer comfortable and happy. To do this many Starbucks’ around the world have installed new wireless charging stations in there stores so that when costumers are there they can easily charge their phones without worrying about bringing a charger of their own. This new addition to the stores is just one part of getting ready for the future. Phones and technology in general is a huge part of everyday life and this has to be incorporated into many places people shop. By adding technology to stores it makes the entire buying process more streamline. Starbucks has also integrated the use of phones in to the payment system at every store. Customers use their own phone that has a barcode to pay for their goods. With just the touch of a button the entire buying process can be completed. This makes it easy because you do not need to worry about remembering your wallet all you need is your phone and many people already have it with them. Included in the app is also a rewards system that provides user with rewards bases on how often they go and even recommendations for what a customer may enjoy next time. One of the newest changes

The “Coffee Wars – The Big Three: Starbucks, McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts” article focuses on the company analysis of the Starbucks brand and how its main competitors, McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts, has affected their brand and driven competition higher. Even though there are many companies trying to enter the specialty coffee market, these three companies own the majority of the market share. With Starbucks’ top quality and above average prices they hold a different market than the fast coffee/food market of Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks; yet the competitive moves Dunkin’ Donuts has made over the years in order to compete with Starbucks and surpass McDonald’s has driven competition up between all three companies. The competition has stiffened ever more in the past ten years due to the changing economy. This led to “the big three” to come up with different techniques to gain competitive advantage over the other. Although the competition between these companies is to gain most of the market share, consumers are still loyal to a certain brand; this makes it difficult to gain each other’s clientele. McDonald’s continues to appeal to customers who want value and speed, Dunkin’ Donuts focuses on the middle-class, while Starbucks a customer who desires a higher quality product along with being recognized for using the brand.

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

I watched the video “The Coffee Go-Round” which talks about how the cost of coffee seems to be dropping and as a result this has a negative impact on coffee producing countries. One of the strategies mentioned in the video is to grow different crops, this strategy isn’t so great since many of these farmers don’t have enough money to grow different crops. Another strategy mentioned is to move out of the land and go into the city, this is a good and bad option. It’s a good option since in cities there are more jobs being offered. However, it’s not such a great option because many of these farmers have lived their whole lives on their land, and moving to the city is a drastic change especially if they have a family. Lastly, another option is fair

Sometimes they only pack one tortilla for lunch because that’s all they can afford. One of the men in the film took ten years to pay back the loan he received to purchase the land. Guatemala farmers work really hard and sometimes, they are paid whatever the buyer wants to give them for it. Their children has to work after school to help out, they live in poverty, and they don’t rest until the end of the work day at 10 or 11 at night. I never knew that buying one cup of coffee has this effect on the farmers. This is common with globalization because, “for instance, multinational corporations sometimes continue to invest only enough in poorer countries to efficiently extract the resources they produce or to benefit from the low costs of labor obtained there” (Chapter 10.5, para. 5).

The issue of hunger in africa has caused major chaos around the world. The fact that families and children are left to die because there is insufficient food; therefore, families are separated and left to suffer. For example, on page 1 of “Why Africa Is Still Starving”, by Alex Perry, it states that, “From January to May, the fields were parched and brown. And one failed harvest is enough to turn Ethiopia, a nation of 66 million farmers, a humanitarian catastrophe”. Alex Perry explains how the soil of Africa is not rich enough to grow any goods or rich crops.

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”.

Fair trade is a movement that strives for fair treatment for farmers and it’s main goal is to reduce poverty in the developing nations. Fair trade strives for social justice and Brewing Justice analyzes indigenous coffee farmers in Oaxaca, Mexico to see if the fair trade is an important movement for the farmers. We are brought into the households of workers to see the social movements, economic and cultural survival, and environmental effects of fair trade. Author Daniel Jaffee spent months deep in Mexico to see how Fair Trade affected the coffee crops of societies and shares stories of his experiences to help support his claim that Fair Trade is not a solution to the growing numbers of families in poverty who grow coffee.

Life is rough for millions of poor food producers, the current economic crisis especially makes the industry extremely tough for them. The rise and fall in demand and prices can mean the difference between eating a nice meal or going a day with nothing to eat. Women are worst affected by this as they are often employed casually and with low wages. Commonly the first to be let go when times get tough. Support for these communities include getting farmers a fair price and campaigning against global trade rules that keep people in

With no choice families have to work in labour to pay off debts or to support life in a family. An example is Mohammed Ali Indris, 36 year old Ethiopian coffee farmer who has 12 children. Mohammed's year profit of selling coffee beans decreased from US$320 to US$60. He stated "I had to sell my oxen this year to pay for the loan I took out for fertiliser and pesticides that I needed. If I couldn't pay the loan I would have gone to prison." This evidence shows how socioeconomic conditions of the farmers are the factors of citizens in developing countries growing coffee beans. Poverty must be considered one of the primary causes contributing to the linear global spatial pattern of this topic. However, the coffee producing countries form a linear pattern around the equator line, with a large quantity of the countries being part of South America. Regions

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

Thus, Starbucks exploits the situation brought about through globalisation, as their "Workers earn two cents a pound for picking berries," says Eric Hahn of the Chicago-based U.S./Guatemala Labor Education Project, whilst ”Starbucks turns around and sells a pound of Guatemalan coffee beans for nine dollars” (Zielinski, 1995). However, Alex Singleton, a fellow at the Adam Smith Institute claimed that 'Starbucks has done more to lift coffee farmers out of poverty than almost anyone else - including Oxfam and the do-gooders,’ (Davis, 2008). Believing that "the answer to development is not large amounts of foreign aid [rather] it’s getting these countries to engage in the global market, and Starbucks helps that’ (Davis, 2008). Certainly, Starbucks has provided work for farmers living in poverty. Although, Starbucks relationship with the farmers was solely developed for the purpose of exploiting and using these farmers and their workers to gain maximum profit by paying $0.57 per pound of coffee sold to the farmers, that’s 2.2 per cent of the $26 per pound it sells for in the United States (Davis, 2008). Thus, not only are Starbucks exploiting the poverty stricken farmers of Guatemala through underpaying them, but they are also forced to work in virtual slave conditions in an unsafe and unsanitary environment. Hence, Starbucks uses the Globalised world to