The Value Of A Commodity

Coffee is globally traded commodity. It is the second-most traded commodity with oil being the first. Coffee is generally traded in financial instruments known as futures contracts, and this is mainly done through the New York Board of Trade. In recent years, countries producing coffee has been increasing. Established producers like Colombia have faced bigger competition from these countries seeking to enter the market. Because of increasing number in countries it makes it harder for coffee producers to influence prices. Over the last few centuries, coffee has grown into one of the world’s most popular drink. There has been strong growth for coffee as it has become a fashionable drink. Coffee has replaced alcohol as a drink of choice for workers

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

Costa Rica now provided raw material for Starbucks which accounted for about 15 percent of the total coffee beans Starbucks needed every year. Costa Rica as one of the raw material suppliers plays an important role in global value chain. Coffee has played a pivotal role in the development of Costa Rica. It has shaped social, cultural and political institutions and is still one of country’s major agricultural exports. (Anywhere, 2016) The global value chain in this coffee industry can be described that Starbucks, the centre in this coffee global value chain, purchasing raw materials (coffee beans) from coffee farms in Costa Rica, reprocessing and reproducing in retail shops, selling the finished products (various kinds of coffee) to customers in the world.

Coffee is then sent to roasting facilities where it is blended. By “manipulating the composition of the blend, roasters

in capitalism, the production of commodities is based on an exploitative economic relationship between owners of factories, and the workers who produce the commodities. in everyday life, we think only of the market value of a commodity, in other words, its price. but this monetary value simultaneously depends on and masks the fact that someone was exploited to make that commodity.

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.

In chapter seven, it was stated that the coffee shop company do not completely buy from the small-time farmers. In case regarding towards Rwanda, a developing area where Starbucks supposedly performs fair trade, it was discovered that Starbucks buy their coffee beans from bigger plantations and the middle man, who buys coffee beans from small-time farmers usually scamming them (216). This creation of image of Starbucks being a good corporate business in helping the small time farmers earn more income is contracted by Simon’s findings, and shows that the coffee company is actually taking advantage of the small time farmers, when Starbucks buys from the middle man or the big plantation owners, it pay less for the coffee beans than they do if Starbucks purchases beans from small-time farmers. The greed of Starbucks at the expense of the individual farmers is unethical, yet the coffee shop company markets the contradiction.

Commodity Fetish’s are the relationship between an individual and the production and the consumption of goods. Marx explains that capitalism is a product

According to the Oxford dictionary, commodity is any raw material that can be bought and sold for economic means. That said, sugar and coffee are all commodities, because they can be sold and bought for a monetary value. The problem with this description however is that by simplifying the word commodity into a material gain or based on money, it’s undermining the value of the material like its cultural worth and origin. Therefore, this is reason why when we buy sugar, we see it based on its tastiness or its financial worth, but rarely as a material that can cause social ,cultural and even historically difference; which is why the book “Sweetness and power” is important in revealing the relational and historical fact about sugar.

According to Marx, there are several “powers” of commodities. He believed that a commodity has both a use-value and an exchange value but that there was also had a third factor: value. Use-value is how valuable a good is. Marx explains how it is only useful for the person using the commodity. For example, if I am selling a frisbee or a chicken, I have no use-value for this commodity. The use-value of a commodity only serves to satisfy social need. The demand is for its function only exists for the consumer that wants the a frisbee or a chicken. On the other hand, the seller, is interested in the exchange-value because they want to know how much they can get for their commodity. Unlike use-value, exchange value is not intrinsic. This is only

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

This week’s readings focused on the market mechanisms and whether these mechanisms have the ability to change the meaning of the goods and social practice that they encompass. After reading some compelling stances on both sides, I think that market mechanisms change the meaning of the goods and social practices they regulate, and this creates a negative effect on our society. In this paper, I will start by defining what the market system is and explain the transformation of a good to a commodity. From there, I will use several examples of goods and services that have been turned into commodities

Dating back to the late middle ages, the term “commodity” has been redefined and analyzed by different theorists. Masking the social and material relations that bring them into existence, commodities and the act of commodification have become totalizing cultural forces in society. Throughout the readings and frameworks of W.E.B DuBois, Lillian Hellman, Anna Julia Cooper and Angela Davis, the reoccurring concept of commodification and it’s connection to women’s labor underlies discussion on various notions of what it looks like historically and contemporarily. Commodification manifests itself through things like cotton, land, sexuality, railroad bonds, and technology. Using the aforementioned manifestations, this analysis will examine the idea

Statistics show that over half of the American population consumes coffee on a daily basis. You may drink coffee hot, cold, mixed, or even in a frappuccino. Individuals are able to make coffee at home, or buy it on the go. Coffee provides people with caffeine, which ultimately gives energy for hardworking people all around the world. The main focus for this paper will cover the following topics, with coffee as the basis: causes for shifts in supply and demand, how coffee supply and demand influence price, quantity,

The film highlights the fact that coffee is the most valued word commodity, second to oil. The beginning of the film shows the process in which coffee is made- from bean harvesting by workers in Ethiopia who make next to nothing, through several intermediated stages, and into the market. Although we spend countless amounts of money on coffee without thinking twice, the price that coffee farmers who produce this commodity are getting paid, is disgustingly low. Some of them have even been forced to walk away from their fields. There is no better place to see this