Bolivian Mejillones coffee is a highly fragrant specialty coop coffee. This organic fair trade product is also noted for its certification as an SPP (Símbolo de Pequeños Productores). SPP is a grass-roots certification which belongs to small farm cooperatives located primarily in Central and South America. An SPP certification is limited to small production farms and denotes that these farms maintain fair, transparent, and sustainable farming practices. An SPP designation is well-respected, even by skeptics of other industry certifications.
Bolivian Mejillones coffee is a single-origin Arabica coffee of the varieties Typica (Criolla) and Catimor (Timor and Caturra cross). The coffee is shade grown under the lush canopy of the rainforest
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The dirt road, which encompasses a stretch of 43 miles from Coroico to La Paz, is barely the width of one motor vehicle, has no guardrails, is often slippery and succumbs to rain damage, and threatens sheer drops of up to 2,000 feet. As many as 300 people per year died along the death highway, and formerly, all of the coffee beans growing in the Yungas region had to be taken by way of this treacherous road. A new highway has since been built that bypasses this devilish road, but its’ devastating legacy is still ingrained in the hearts of the …show more content…
The Mejillones farmers grow their coffee beans in the Yungas area of the Caranavi Province in Bolivia. The average farm size is 7 Hectares. With the help and guidance of FECAFEB, The Federation of Coffee Exporting Producers of Bolivia, the Mejillones coop produces a yearly average of 3,750,000 pounds of exportable, green coffee beans which sell on the national and international organic and fair trade markets. FECAFEB is a national umbrella organization founded in 1991 to inform, educate, and defend the rights of small-scale coffee farmers. It currently has organized more than 40 coffee cooperatives and associations throughout Bolivia. The coop organizations belonging to FECAFEB are the lead producers of Bolivian coffee, exporting nearly 90% of the country’s coffee beans while simultaneously promoting sustainable farming practices and development for the small-scale coffee producers throughout the
Chavez Ravine was a self-sufficient and tight-knit community, a rare example of small town life within a large urban metropolis, but no matter how much the inhabitants loved thei...
Brazil is known for having a very large biodiversity and having a huge portion of the Amazonian forest in its land. Yet, because of globalization, this country suffers a great deal environmentally wise and socially also. Both adults and children have to work in order to be able to survive. Many of these workers are exploited and changing this reality is quit hard. It all comes down to profits at the end: exploiting workers is much cheaper than paying them properly. At least, there are some people who are actually putting some effort on solving this problem. This is where the issue involving coffee in Brazil comes in. The actors involved in this product are either greatly benefited or exploited and the working conditions for the farmers are quit terrible. However, there are solutions that were proposed in order to protect the coffee growers such as fair trade. It is then understood that coffee production in Brazil has negative effects on coffee laborers, but to a lesser extent on those who work in the fair trade business.
As discussed in class, when demand decreases for a product, companies or in this case producers should exit the market. But when it comes to coffee, producers don’t want to exit the market because the costs of moving out of coffee production are quiet large and farmers don’t have the means for alternatives. The reason being that, farmers don’t have any outside funding to promote efficient diversification and development. Another reason is that there are protection policies from the United States and the European Union that have made it harder for framers to benefit from producing other crops. And yet, the opportunity cost for farmers to switch to another product is higher than the cost of coffee in a low profit market. So, this book discusses different strategies that are being used to help producers get a better advantage to provide a living for their families. Different strategies being used include shade-grown coffee, differentiation of products, organic coffe...
At the end of 2014, 129 small farmers organizations in 20 countries held a certificate to produce and sell Fairtrade cocoa. Helping representing 179,800 small-scale farmers. Sales weight of Fairtrade cocoa grew to 70,600 tonnes in 2013-14, year-on-year increase by 17%. These sales include a Fairtrade Premium of $200 per tonne for farmers, this helps them to invest in their businesses or local community. In 2013-14, cocoa organizations received £8.4 million in Premiums. Which 37% was invested in various projects and programs to improve productivity and quality. The Premium is also invested in community programs such as schools (Côte D’Ivoire has only around a 50% literacy rate), medical centers and clean running water. Read more about the investments made by cocoa farmers with the Fairtrade Premium in this recount.” Farmers in the 85,000-strong Fairtrade certified Kuapa Kokoo cooperative in Ghana have spent their premium on building wells for drinking water, building public toilets, and a mobile clinic to visit member’s
There are many essentials that are fetishized by Americans; one of those things is coffee. It is no secret that there is a big demand for coffee with many specialty coffee shops springing up, such as Starbucks, Peet’s and Coffee Bean. Oftentimes, the consumer loses sight of where things come from and how they are produced. A key component of production is the producer. The consumer does not pay enough attention to the ethical treatment and wages of the producer. This paper discusses Karl Marx’s premise on Fetishism of Commodities and its direct relation to the production of coffee, focusing on the value of the coffee bean as well as how that directly impacts the farmer and his family.
“The selling of coffee has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry in the past decade. The coffee beans fueling this burgeoning business are grown in the rainforest”.There are two ways to grow coffee; In the shade,which preserves rain forest ,and in the sun,which destroys the rain forest”. This brings out that there are ways coffee can help the rainforest and can even also destroy it.
It wasn’t until the 1700s that the secrets of coffee growing were finally wrestled from the growers in Yemen and the Red Sea region, and coffee began to be grown as a plantation crop (Cowan, 76). Coffee’s switch from being a specialty product to a plantation crop is truly why coffee became available in large quantities and developed as a global beverage. Before this change, there simply wasn’t enough coffee available to be consumed the way it was by the end of the 1800s. Before the introduction of plantation crops, “matching supply with the nascent consumer demand for coffee in Britain was not an easy task” (Cowan, 61). Essentially, even though there was an increase of demand for coffee in England, the East India Company could not meet that demand until plantation crops enabled the supply to
An article in the Seattle Post, describes the alliance that Starbucks is making to ensure that a sustainable supply of high quality of coffee is produce in Latin America. "Starbucks President and CEO Orin Smith said the alliance is partly his company's effort to pass on the "high price" of a cup of coffee to farmers." (Lee, 2004). He states that the high price enables them to pay the highest price to the farmers. Though the high prices to suppliers can demonstrate that money get to farmers with being diverted. Starbucks overall goal with this alliance is to buy 60 percent of its coffee under the standards agreed upon by 2007. "The agreement reflects the growing power of the premium coffee market and efforts to exploit it for the benefit of small farmers" (Lee, 2004).
Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO) is an organization which promotes fair trade. It focuses on improving lives of producers in undeveloped countries in a sustainable way. According to the official website of FLO, the first Fairtrade labelled product was coffee from Mexico, which was sold in Dutch supermarket in 1988. During the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the idea of Fairtrade had been spread, and FLO was established in 1997 in Germany. Except Russia, East European countries, Saudi Arabia, some countries in the Middle East and Greenland, almost all the countries in the world participate in FLO as a licensee or Fairtrade producer. FLO has approximately 20 years history, and it has networks almost all over the world.
In the United States, coffee is the second largest import (Roosevelt, 2004). Furthermore, the United States, consumes one-fifth of all the worlds¡¦ coffee (Global Exchange, 2004). The present industry is expanding. It is estimated that North America¡¦s sector will reach saturation levels within 5 year (Datamonitor. n.d.). According to National Coffee Association (NCA), 8 out of 10 Americans consume coffee. In addition, it is estimated that half of the American population drinks coffee daily. The international market remains highly competitive. It is estimated that 3,300 cups of coffee are consumed every second of the day worldwide (Ecomall, n.d.). The latest trends included dual drinkers, an increase in senior citizens...
The women in this small rural farming community in Costa Rica came together to empower themselves and keep their community from falling deeper into economic decline. When they first started, they had no idea how to run a business or produce coffee. After reaching out to women working in the coffee industry, they began to learn the process of production and how to sustain a business. Through learning techniques through programs available to them and
This bean is native to the South American origin and comes from a small tropical tree in which the seeds are fermented and then used to make the cocoa powder that we use to make chocolate (Brill, Janet Bond, 162). It is filled with many antioxidants that offers many benefits to the brain and the body in general to improve everyday functions (Marano, Ham Estroff).
This is not a cherry that might be on a milkshake, but it does look like a cross between an enlarged red cranberry and a cherry. Once the coffee cherry is ready to be processed, the bean must be extracted. There are two methods for this; A wet and a dry one. The dry method is simpler and is typically only used when water is scarce, but it takes a significant amount of time for the bean to dry out. The wet method, however, is more common. First, the pulp must be pulled out, and then the beans are sent through a water pipe where the skin is removed. From there the beans journey into spinning drums which separates them by size. Once separated, they are sent to fermentation tanks to sit for twelve to forty-eight hours. After fermentation, there are a couple more steps such as different methods for drying the bean, and hulling it. Now the beans are ready for export, and are sorted by size and color. The milled beans, or green coffee, are loaded into shipping containers ready to make their way into the world (Murray). As global warming is affecting where the coffee can be grown this causes exporting problems because it can not be grown as quick as it is needed. Data from the USDA Foreign Agriculture Service predicted that the world coffee production for the 2015/2016 fiscal year would be 152.7 million sixty kilogram bags of coffee (Murray). Coffee is exported all over the world, but it can not be grown all over the
At arrival to the factory, the beans are weighed, cleaned, and then blended. Roasting of the beans follows to develop the beans’ flavor and to make removal of t...