Video Analysis: The Coffee Go-Round

Times have changed, and so has the family, the community and our environment. And these changes have impacted our lives and earth immeasurably. This is where the factor greed comes in to play, the need for more. This need for more called for extensive measures, measures like fertilizers, pesticides and equipment to work the ground and harvest the crops became necessity. Agriculture became a booming business that did not and still does not promote the well-being of the employee nor the individual let alone the family unit and community. Since 1950 an average farm size has doubled, but the number of laborers decreased substantially and the number of small local farmers has been cut in half. Farmers have been forced to become more efficient and there 's been a reliance on greater chemicals and technology, which has become very extensive and expensive. Sadly, what has been short term expansion has become a long-term threat (Trautmann, 2012). This greed driven increase has led to subtle damaging ramifications that most people are ignorant to. Their needs are being met as quality is being forsaken. Our environment is being squandered. Selfishness abounds.

However, some believe, that a shift in the way we produce food may have some unintended consequences. They contend that poverty in nations such as Africa and Asia, is caused by the low productivity of the unindustrialized farm labor. The U.S. Agriculture Department projects, without reform, there will be over a thirty percent increase in the numbers of the ‘food insecure’ people in those nations over the next decade (Paarlberg 179).

In the cities of Wichita Falls and Vernon, the thought of economic growth and the reduction of poverty does not usually cross the minds of most citizens, but as the economic advisor of both cities, it is the main concern of my career. There are many factors that contribute towards these issues, like tax cuts, infrastructure spending, deregulation, and tax rebates (DePersio), but one focused inducer is agriculture development.

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).

In Columbia, there are numerous industries. Most of them are natural ones such a coffee growing or sugar cane. Columbia is developing new forms of sustainable growing practices for their primary crops, as it not only benefits the environment, but also the profits of the major agricultural companies. These are beneficial for the environment because instead of tearing down beautiful forests to put up a building, the sustainable farming methods are helping to preserve the forests while increasing the quantity of crops of coffee and sugar cane. While organizations are working to improve sustainability, an already existing issue exists, a lack of workers. Although Columbia may be facing challenges such as a lack of workers,

Similar to the reasons for world hunger, there are misleading solutions. The increase in local production of the exported goods is not a solution because the profits continue to flow into the pockets of the corporations. The green revolution is not a solution either. The problem being the farmers cannot afford the seeds, fertilizers and pesticides needed to grow the

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”.

In the video from After the Harvest there were several lines that really resonated with me, such as how 1 in 7 people are starving or how every second of every day 14 children die of unnecessary causes, these statistics are enough to shock you however they are not often thought of since they are thought of as being not related since they are happening somewhere else. These numbers relate to coffee production since these numbers are prevalent in the areas like Central America where coffee production is dominant. “Coffee is the world's second most valuable traded commodity, behind only petroleum. There are approximately 25 million farmers and coffee workers in over 50 countries involved in producing coffee around the world. Coffee was traditionally

Throughout her documentary Hot Coffee, Saladoff, delivers a scathing critique of how American society fell victim to the devastating power of media and its creators and their ability to generate political and social change during the subsequent years after the Stella Liebeck case. Ultimately, while expounding on how the process of the smear campaign against Liebeck and her case was wrought by special interest groups during the succeeding years, for Saladoff, assuredly, low levels of agency among American media consumers stood at center stage; its consequences contributing dramatically to how special interest groups and their affiliated media producers could generate political and economic changes in American society. Moreover, these changes

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

Assuming that the demand and supply for premium coffees are in equilibrium, the price will be at a constant, without significant pressure from the market. If Starbucks introduced the world to premium blends, this would cause a positive shift in the demand curve. There a higher equilibrium price and higher quantity when demand increases and supply remain unchanged. As prices increase, and the market moves to a new equilibrium, we will see higher wages, more advances and investments in technology and infrastructure, and greater competition. As production become more efficient and competition becomes greater, supply will increase and cause prices to settle back down. There are several factors that will impact the long-term equilibrium, such as changes in supply. For example, if a hard freeze eliminated Brazil’s premium coffee crop, this would cause a negative shift in the supply curve. Assuming demand remains constant a negative shift in the supply curve will cause quantity to decrease and equilibrium price to increase. Research shows that in 2011 a frost occurred in Brazil's southeastern coffee growing belt. Traders worried that next year's yields could be hurt. At the same time, heavy rains during harvest forced Columbia to reduce its crop estimate for 2011. Understanding the impact of problems along the supply chain and how the changes in supply

Coffee drinkers all have one thing in common; they want their coffee made to their specification. Most soft drinks, milkshakes, and draft beer are ready made. Coffee has many flavors and that can be an operational nightmare. Starbucks has 10 different types of coffee beans, 12 blends of flavors and loads of special toppings.

Today that push of farmers to leave their rural areas and move to the city can be associated with an inability to compete with large corporations. These large companies have the resources and ability to undercut and

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

Dak Lak is the largest province in the Central Highland region of Vietnam. Due to its perfect climate, soil and topography for coffee production, Dak Lak’s economy is once based in agriculture and forestry with coffee cultivation the dominating industry. Despite signs of a long-term collapse in coffee prices, temporary profitable returns to coffee production and government schemes have encouraged many new coffee planters in the early 1990s (Ha & Shively, 2005). Large areas of forest land have been destroyed and converted for new coffee plantations. In addition, temporary price rises