What Does A Slave, The Atlantic Forest / Amazon?

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 had lots of demand, but little supply. The country that could grow and export the most coffee had a substantial economic advantage over other countries in terms of commerce.

According to statistics, Finland is the country with the highest per capita consumption of coffee, and China is the lowest one, but in Finland there are nearly five million residents only, which means Finland will consume a million bags of coffee every year, but the 1.3 billion residents of China will provide approximately 200 million potential coffee consumers, and this will make China becomes a major coffee market. On the other hand, under the same culture background, compare to Japan and Korea, Chinese average annual per capita consumption is only around 20 Cups, but this also means Chinese consumer coffee market has a big room for future growth.

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

By 1700 England becomes the largest consumer of coffee. Coffee becomes known as the drink of commerce because the merchant class welcomed the drink without any hesitation.

1. Coffee is one of the most common breakfast items found on any table in the morning and now sold all throughout the day. Coffee is grown and exported from places like Columbia and the Asian Pacific, to anywhere like Hawaii and the biggest producer, Brazil. 1/3 of the world 's coffee supply comes from Brazil, because of the nations tropical climate it is able to grow coffee very easily and plentiful. Brazil had many other types of climates but the hot and tropical one is great for the production of coffee.

In Middle and South America, it is evident that human interactions affect the physical features. The human interaction that affects Middle and South America is deforestation. In 1970’s a period of deforestation began in Brazil with the construction of the Trans-Amazon Highway; the road allowed migrant farmers to grow crops (Pulsipher & Pulsipher 2012). Deforestation continued throughout Middle and South America. The use lodging of hardwoods, extracting minerals, oil, gas, stones and clearing off land for raising cattle, and growing crops has impacted most of the land in Middle and South America (Pulsipher & Pulsipher 2012). The human interaction of deforestation has led to many environmental issues, changes in physical features. There are loss

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.

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

The 9th largest coffee producer in Latin America is Peru. It is mainly produced in the valleys of Chanchamayo and Urabamba. The coffee is described as being “mild, flavorful, and aromatic”. Most farms are small in the country, being only 5 acres. The crops are grown all over the country, but

Brazilwood was a key product for Portuguese trade. But the focus on timber would soon change. Cash crops in the form of sugar cane production became the focus. Slavery was needed for the growing of sugar cane and replaced the unsuccessful usage of native people for labor. “Regular slave trade between Brazil and Africa was begun in the 1550s as a temporary measure to replace the Indians decimated by war and disease, but it lasted for over 300 years, and the institution of slavery persisted until 1889, Brazil being the last country of the American hemisphere to abolish it.” The agricultural focus of sugar cane changed to coffee bean production in the late 19th century. As coffee began to take off, slavery was abolished. With the influx of Africans halted, foreign immigration was promoted. This would have a profound effect on the societal make-up of the colony. Mass migrations were already occurring as the Portuguese had established their minute South American empire. Between 1884 and 1920 three million immigrants, mainly Italian, entered the country. Portuguese, Germans, Italians, Spanish, Britons, the descendants of African slaves and the products of racial mixtures of Brazilian Indians, Europeans, and Africans would be the kin of those who football would become entrenched within.

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

During the time of the coffee boom, another industry was beginning to rise. By the late 1930s, agricultural industries began to take a back seat to industrialization of the cities. Even as times were changing however, Brazil remained one of the world’s top coffee producers.

There’s not clear information about how coffee arrived in Colombia. The historic archive says that the Jesuits brought the seeds around 1730. The tradition says that the seeds arrived threw the east of the country, and the harvest where registries in Giron, Santander and Muzo, Boyacá. In 1835 the first commercial production produced 2560 bags and they were exported from Cucuta’s custom. Then the coffee extended to the center and west of the country in the departments of Cundinamarca, Antioquia and the zone of old Caldas. The consolidation of coffee as a product for exportation was from the second half of XIX century. The great expansion of the world economy in that period made that the Colombian peasants find an attractive opportunities in the International market. Between the end of 70s of the XIX century and the start of the XX century the annual production of coffee passed from 60.000 bags to 600.000 bags, this was made in the main big farms of the departments of Santander and Cundinamarca, having at the end of XIX century, 80 percent of the total coffee national production. There was a decline in the international prices in the first years of the XX century; this made a big change in the Colombian coffee cultivation. It can be concluded that in the period between

The coffee-growing countries are forced into competition with each other, each trying to get a bigger share of the market. This means that they all produce more and more coffee. As a result, there is too much coffee on the world market and the price falls, so each country has to try to sell more coffee to make the same amount of money chart: coffee consuming countries Most of the world's coffee is bought by just a few countries, and most of the world's coffer market is controlled by a very few companies. Just nine countries in the North import over 70% of the coffee on the world market.