Coffee is the second most valuable trading commodity in the world, just behind oil.  People across the planet consume more than 3 billion pounds of it every year, making it the world’s single most popular beverage and accounts for an 80 billion dollar industry.  In the United States alone, the coffee consumers spend in excess of 18 billion dollars a year on coffee in the retail and foodservice sectors.   Why then, when coffee plays such a significant role in the global economy, do so many coffee farmers live in a state of extreme poverty?  Of more than 25,000,000 coffee farmers worldwide, an inordinate percent live in poor, primitive conditions with little or n...

Coffee is the second most valuable trading commodity in the world, just behind oil.  People across the planet consume more than 3 billion pounds of it every year, making it the world’s single most popular beverage and accounts for an 80 billion dollar industry.  In the United States alone, the coffee consumers spend in excess of 18 billion dollars a year on coffee in the retail and foodservice sectors.

 

Why then, when coffee plays such a significant role in the global economy, do so many coffee farmers live in a state of extreme poverty?  Of more than 25,000,000 coffee farmers worldwide, an inordinate percent live in poor, primitive conditions with little or no access to basic education or health facilities.  As is common in many underdeveloped rural communities, subsistence farmers often live in areas with little to no government support or public infrastructure (roads, electricity, running water).  It is one the great ironies that much of the specialty coffee now marketed and consumed in the luxury market today is produced in areas of such devastating poverty.

 

Though the average American may spend  an average of $2.45 for every espresso drink and $1.45 for every cup of coffee, local farmers can expect to receive just a fraction of that revenue.  It’s estimated that approximately $0.10 from every dollar spent on coffee finds it way back to the farmer; the vast majority finds its way to the coffers of the roasters and retailers.  And although ten years ago the producer-country’s raw export may have accounted for one-third of the value of the world coffee market, today that figure has fallen below ten percent.  In fact, the last five years have witnessed a $4 billion drop in the value of coffee exports across the world.

 

The plight of the coffee farmer is by no means a recent development – this unfortunate demographic has suffered greatly from unstable prices and variable production for well over 100 years.  Even so, the past decade has proven an especially difficult time as world prices continued to drop in the face of over-production and lagging consumption.  By 2003, world prices hit a 30 year low while leading producers such as Colombia watched their coffee revenues fall by as much as 50 percent.  That same year, the World Bank estimated that as many as 600,000 people in Central America abandoned their farms and fled to Mexico and the United States in search of work.

 Coffee farms suffer greatly from price fluctuations, drought, unstable economies, pests, and bad harvests that ultimately lead to a rough cycle of poverty.

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