The Truth Behind Coffee Essay

Continuous war in combination with rampant drug trafficking has caused the coffee industry in Colombia to struggle for many years, though Colombia’s long history with coffee predates that struggle. The coffee plant first reached Colombia sometime in the late 1700s (Encyclopedia of World Trade: From Ancient Times to the Present) and Colombia entered the coffee trade in the 1830s (Wikipedia, Coffee Production in Colombia). The geography of Colombia lends itself well to coffee production. Located in southern South America, Colombia is home to the Andes Mountains, which provides an optimal altitude for coffee (and coca) to grow. The Andes have three sets of mountain ranges, the Western Cordillera, the Central Cordillera, and the Eastern Cordillera. The majority of the coffee plantations in Colombia are on the western side of the Eastern Cordillera (Philip’s World Factbook 2008-2009).

Coffee has not only impacted the world socially, but it provides financial means for many countries who export their coffee beans.

Fortunately, the current examination has shown coffee to continue a of good health choice, as lengthy as one is not topping more than 3 topping-bout a day. This guideline is based on the deed that the cardinal element found in coffee is a intermix called caffeine. Caffeine is a of nature intermix made from more than 50 vegetable sources. While caffeine in undue amount has been linked to some increased freedom from disease

“Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.” Coffee has an affect on many people’s daily lives as well as many aspects of society. First we will go over the history of coffee and how it was discovered, then look at just how much work goes into the production of coffee, after that we will see how much coffee is actually consumed and how it affects everyday culture, we will discover how to make the perfect cup of coffee, and finally we will look at how drinking coffee can benefit your health. The positive effects create a more vivid picture of health for a society in comparison to the occasional negative effect that has been found.

It is important to approach everything, including a cup of coffee, with a holistic perspective in order to better have a grasp of what the consequences of your actions are and to better understand the processes of what it requires to attain it. Coffee is much more than the warm tasty beverage that gets you up and keeps you charged throughout the day. The fact is, many people take the products they consume for granted and do not consider the impact that this consumption has on the environment , for example deforestation in order to plant more, the lives of the workers who produce the coffee, and drivers who transport the coffee, (which leaves a substantial carbon footprint) , to the business practices of the those who distribute the coffee. The fact is , a lot goes into that cup of coffee, and it affects more people’s lives and appears to be more interconnected than one might

Ever since the first coffee bean tree was discovered in Ethiopia, the bean became a pleasurable commodity that spread quickly to Yemen and other Asian countries. It wasn’t long before it came to Brazil, becoming one of the largest coffee producing countries in the world today. Throughout time, people came up with brewing systems and coffee-making machines that made it easy to manufacture coffee but it wasn’t like that in the early 1800’s. Slaves came into Brazil and were forced to work in difficult labor conditions to collect and roast coffee beans.

Approximately eighty percent of caffeine is consumed in the form of coffee, and in the United States we average about two cups of coffee per day. More than 150 million Americans drink coffee on a daily basis (Vantal). Some people can use coffee as a scapegoat for instance, “I can not work properly without my coffee in the morning. ” I had went to my local and asked out of curiousty how many drinks do they serve, and their response was about six hundred to seven hundred beverages, but locations do vary.

1. Coffee growers in poor rural areas are paid very little for their crop. What strategies are proposed in this clip for changing that situation?

Together, coffee and cattle account for most of the deforestation of the Atlantic Forest and Amazon. Deforestation for agriculture and cattle, urbanization, human population growth, have resulted

In looking at the history of coffee through the book Uncommon Grounds, we have seen coffee move throughout the world. Coffee originated in Ethiopia and grown wildly that was discovered by a goat name Kaldi. It was first eaten as a berry, then boiled, then roasted and finally, grinded to what we now know drink today and have created new ways to drink it as well. Coffee is the second most traded commodity and is grown in the Southern Hemisphere and consumed in the Northern Hemisphere. Here in the United States, it is evident that Americans love their coffee and drink it many times throughout the day. It can be argued that the “world coffee supply would continue to grow, stimulated in large part by the seemingly bottomless American coffee cup.”

Farmers are looking into this crop because it is being grown in avocado groves. Many people are considering growing coffee in avocado groves. It has become a major dispute between many farmers. In the article, Stephanie talks about how many people will pay money for these coffee beans (Storm, Stephanie. “Your Coffee is from Where? California?” New York Times, May 26, 2017). However, climate is also playing a role in the making of coffee beans. The climate affects the growth of coffee. The climate is damaging the crop. If it is very hot outside, the crop does not grow. Coffee growth has decreased due to the heat. In the article, coffee drinkers are more likely to spend money on their coffee rather than to drink it black. The avocado trees are increasing the growth of coffee because it is providing the crop cover. It is protecting the crop from heat which can damage the growth. These avocado trees are very important because without these trees, coffee would not be

This resulted in major emissions from deforestation, which before, coffee sectors had talked of maintaining shaded coffee farms and their carbon stocks, as “after all, coffee farms under shade conserve more carbon than coffee grown in direct sunlight, but at the cost of lower yields (The Coffee Exporter’s Guide- Third Edition. New York: United Nations Publications).” Along with the emissions, the switch to ‘sun cultivation’ techniques included in the destruction of vast “biodiversity of over 1.1 million hectares ("Coffee the Environment and Labor." Coffee the Environment and Labor.),” as the technique involved chopping down forests, mono-cropping, and the introduction of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. This form of coffee farming led to severe environmental problems, such as: pesticide pollution due to chemically induced coffee pulp is often dumped into streams and soil, deforestation of a great biome, and the extinction of various birds.

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

Unshaded monoculture systems dominate many coffee farms in Puebla and Chiapas. This system removes canopies and deprives coffee plants of natural barriers that tall trees provide. A major disadvantage of this method is that coffee plants are more vulnerable to pests and diseases. Therefore, more chemicals are used in order to minimize plant stresses. Particles from pesticides can travel far and contaminate soil and water or contribute to global warming. Removal of canopies also reduces biodiversity because of a decrease in habitat space. A major advantage of this system is that it is high-yield because the coffee plants have full exposure to the sun. So, more individuals are needed to work on the fields. I think that this specific consequence

Imaging if there was no more coffee in this world, how would you feel? Nowadays, coffee becomes an important part of people’s life. People who often work overtime, they drink coffee because caffeine can make you awake; people who have to wake up early in the morning, they drink coffee because instead of making breakfast, coffee is more convenient; people drink coffee during the free time, because it also tastes good.