Coffee

“…But our pride is in the name of the LORD our God.”  

~Psalm 20:7

One of my classes this semester is Humans in the Tropics.  Throughout my time here, we have “Humans Days,” where the whole day from 8:00am to 6:00pm is spent studying and experiencing the daily theme.   So I got to spend my birthday this year learning about agriculture.

We focused primarily on coffee, and also touched upon other commodity crops grown in the tropics.  Beyond just production and consumption, we learned about and analyzed the environmental impacts of these crops, as well as the economic and social justice issues closely tied. 

To begin the day (after a lecture on agriculture in the tropics) we visited a local, organic family-owned coffee plantation, owned by Eugenio.  At the farm we learned about coffee production, from farmer to your cup, and also explored sustainable growing practices.  Sustainability is more than just organic practices.  It takes into consideration maintaining biodiversity on the farm, usually implies shade-grown coffee, conserves resources, and is healthy and economical for the farmer.  In practice, these criteria are very difficult to meet.

Eugenio’s farm is sustainable and organic.  Six different varieties of coffee are grown on the farm, along with a host of other crops grown for subsistence and occasionally for profit.  All the coffee plants are shade-grown, meaning other trees on the farm are present and adding to forest conservation and biodiversity.  Some crop is lost because organic practices are used, but ecotourism supplements the profit for Eugenio to make a living.  (Ecotourism is basically what the whole tour of the farm was about.  He will make more money in tours than he ever will in coffee at his farm).

Coffee beans on the tree!

A banana tree (Musa acuminata)

A Trigona bee nest in a Ficus tree on the farm

A view of part of the farm... Can you tell?

I got to plant a coffee tree!

After we had walked around the farm a bit and sampled all the crops, we looked at how the beans were shelled, washed, and dried.  They were then stored for up to a year before roasting and sold shortly after that for maximum flavor.  The farm here also harvests and processes sugar cane.  (If you know me you know how much I like sugar…)  I thoroughly enjoyed this part of the tour.

Hand crank to shell the ripe coffee beans

Mechanism used to juice the sugar cane!
And yes I ran around in a circle to help.

The sugar juice would then be boiled in this
large vat to condense the sugar into syrup.

Eugenio explaining how the syrup is then put into a mold
and dried to form blocks of delicious sugar.

All the forms of sugar that I sampled...
Sugar juice, sugar blocks, and straight up sugar cane!

After our interesting and fun tours we went back to the classroom to learn all of the school related stuff that I’m supposed to know…

Here is a general synthesis of the environmental, economic, and societal issues related to coffee production adapted from an assignment for school (so that I can validate in this post that I actually learned something other than how to make coffee), however my brain is too tired at present to synthesis this into an informative but less academic script.

Like many agricultural commodities in the 21^st century, coffee production is closely tied with the environment, economy, and society of local and global populations.  Introduced to Costa Rica in the early 1800s, production has since expanded and become a sizable part of Costa Rica’s economy, representing the third most profitable cash crop for Costa Rica with nearly 82 million kilograms of coffee exported in 2007 alone (International Coffee Organization). The environmental impacts of coffee production range from soil erosion to excessive pesticide use and water pollution, though these impacts could be minimized through better management and sustainable business practices (Clay, 2004).  Additionally, many people were forced into impoverished situations following the crash in global market coffee prices caused by overproduction and deregulation of the coffee industry.

Coffee is just one of the many food items that can be added to an ever growing list of environmental and societal mishaps.  While work is being done to improve labor conditions and wages across the world through Free Trade and other initiatives, and environmental impacts are starting to be taken into account with organic and sustainable growing practices, real change is yet to be seen.  Deforestation remains an issue, with higher yield and shade grown alternatives slowly climbing in popularity.  These methods however are rarely profitable to the farmer, and are not economically sustainable to large monocultures (Niesten et al, 2004).

It is no surprise that areas of great biodiversity coincide with areas exhibiting impeccable agricultural potential.  Year round temperatures minimally fluctuate and copious rainfall in many areas provide optimal conditions for productivity, promising success for monocultures throughout the tropics.  Many countries in the tropics are built heavily, if not solely, on an agricultural economy.  But despite the hopes for high yield and agricultural success, many farmers still remain in poverty.  The export dependence of these commodity crops (such as cocoa and coffee) is extremely high for many tropical countries ranging from 55% for Brazil to 95% for Sri Lanka (Talbot, 2002).  High dependency on one or few crops can quickly lead to an unstable economy as the global supply and demand of these crops fluctuates.  Given the nature of commodity crops, they are often the first foods to crash when the global economy is struggling.  In times of economic hardship, demand for cocoa or coffee may drop significantly, while demand for corn, soy, or wheat may remain relatively stable.  The boom-and-bust nature of these commodity crops has left the farmers of many tropical countries struggling to rise out of impoverished situations.  A surplus of crop is often planted in times of economic depression in an effort to raise profits through quantity produced, consequently compounding the issues of deforestation and overproduction and lowering the price of coffee further (Clough, 2009). 

It is evident that given these situations, the social implications of coffee production are dismal at best.  Historically speaking, individual farmers have suffered while large monocultures profit at the expense of their laborers.  A long line up of steps between the third world farmer and the first world consumer, with each check point keen on making money, results in less income for the farmer and profits congregated in the developed world (Nelson, 2000).  Many farmers feel dependent on coffee due to lack of any other economic alternative, and their livelihoods are based on an industry that fails to meet their basic needs.  Farmers around the world depend on a trade that earns less than $2 per day (Houston, 2012).

The culmination of environmental, economic, and societal crisis in the coffee industry calls for the need of drastic reform focused on reducing deforestation of tropical ecosystems, diversification of commodity crop-based economies in tropical countries, and reducing the dependence of individual farmers and families on crop production.  While change is yet to be made, strategies are being developed and tested around the world in the hope of lowering environmental degradation and biodiversity loss while improving lives around the world.

Ok, now that we have that out of the way (no offense taken if you chose to skip over that last part) my day ended with Skype dates with friends, family, and last-but-not-least birthday cake!

References

Clay, J., 2004, World Agriculture and the Environment: A commodity-by-commodity guide to impacts and practices, Island Press.

Clough, Y., Faust, H., Tscharntke, T., 2009,  “Cacao boom and bust: sustainability of agroforests and opportunities for biodiversity conservation,” Conservation Letters 2 (2009): 197-205.

Gooding, K., Sweet like chocolate?  Making the coffee and cocoa trade work for biodiversity and livelihoods, The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

Houston, H., Wyer, T., 2012, “Why sustainable cocoa farming matters for rural development,” Center for Strategic and International Studies [online] http://csis.org/publication/why-sustainable-cocoa-farming-matters-rural-development

McMillan, M., Masters, W., 2000, “Understanding the political economy of agriculture in the tropics,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 82: 738-742.

Nelson, V., Galvez, M., Social impact of ethical and conventional cocoa trading on forest-dependent people in Ecuador, Natural Resources and Ethical Trade Programme.

Niesten, E., Rice, R., Ratay, S., Paratore, K., 2004, “Commodities and Conservation: The need for greater habitat protection in the tropics,” Conservation International: Center for Applied Biodiversity Science.

Talbot, J., (2002), “Tropical commodity chains, forward integration strategies and internalional inequality: coffee, cocoa, and tea,” Review of International Political Economy 9:4 (November): 701-734.