The Coffee Problem

I knew that coffee growers in South America had to deal with poor conditions, who spend all their lives working through horrible conditions and usually low pay. Now, I always knew that we overpay for the coffee that these big companies push on us (Starbucks, Dunkin’ Doughnuts, ect…). It really is a fine aged wine in many aspects. How much work and thought goes into a bag of Coffee beans. Importation, well…wow. I did NOT know how much importation was done on Coffee alone. Let alone the problems faced by those in Columbia.  10 million bags/year? Wow. That is quite a number, and a lot of cups of coffee. Especially when you think about how much those workers are getting paid, at that big of a discrepancy between payment and what we pay for that cup.

I am all for free trade. It should be done. Why should the company get $3.40 for everycup and the grower gets a whopping 50 cents of those profits. It isn’t fair (Of course life isn’t very fair to begin with, but I digress).  There needs to be some sort of balance, right? Perhaps they could split things more equally. Even a 55% v. 45% profit margin would be better than what they are getting now. Companies from the US and other first world countries should accept a lower profit margin, so those in the poor countries can at least get by.

                The IMF and World Bank seemed to play a hand in this over supply. I don’t think they did this out of bad or ill-will toward Columbia. Just that they wanted both countries to become financially secure and have an ability to develop into first world countries. Now, the question becomes should they be forced to make less coffee? Should we ask them to stop their production so that we can get rid of the oversupply of the coffee? Perhaps if we did the issue of underpayment would be clarified and stopped. On the other hand, it could result in economies in those towns to crash. Unemployment would run rampant, thousands of people without jobs.

Will I stop drinking coffee? No. Sorry, I can’t. Can you? I know you very much enjoy your cup of Starbucks everyone morning during class, so could you stop? Lets be honest here. I don’t think any of us could stop. Coffee is addictive, and with Starbucks we can have coffee seven-ways-to-Sunday. Now, perhaps we could slow our drinking of coffee. Or, only buy from certain countries. Even then though, that doesn’t seem like the best idea. It’s like asking someone who smokes, well now that you know you will get cancer will you stop? Wanna know how many people stop? Not too many. It’s the same thing in this respect. We just can’t stop drinking coffee, it’s like Crack.

                Now when it comes to how exactly we can fix this issue, I’m not too sure. It’s a very complex issue. It’s not just us, but the growers as well. Like I pointed out earlier, when the IMF World Bank told Vietnam to start planting coffee beans, it was going to lead to over production.  However, I mean we drink a lot of coffee, I have friends whom go to Starbucks at least 2 times a day. That’s a lot of coffee and money. So can the issue be all that bad? I think the real is issue is the fact that most coffee bean farmers are paid almost nothing to every dollar the big box houses are making.  So I think the issue here is the need for reform in how exactly people get paid. I think once we work out that solution, we’ll have the exact solution to the problem. Perhaps if we pay the farmers more, they will be able to invest in more property. Even then maybe we can solve the ‘over-farming’ problem by allowing some companies to sell their assets to Columbia. Of course, the problem becomes who says Columbia should be the ones to keep their farming? What gives them the right to it? However, that is another issue that we will have to solve when we get there.