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June 15, 2005
Coffe Farm and Museum
This weekend we went to the Azotea Coffe Museum in Antigua. It was fascinating, and we couldn't believe that our group of friends had never heard of it before. It was a very well done museum, and I had no idea the coffee production process was so fascinating. Starbucks buys a lot of it's finest Arabian beans from this exact farm in Antigua (actually, all the best coffe in Guatemala is exported, so the stuff we drink here is fresh but not amazing).
If you've ever seen "fair trade coffee" or understand that debate, this is where it's origins are:
Although this side of the debate wasn't presented at the museum, I have previously heard a rumor that fair trade coffee is a case study in why you shouldn't screw with natural economics. The numbers in the graph above explain why people wanted to treat the original farms better (workers were complaining) - so they artificially added $.05 per dollar kickback to the producing farms. This fair and generous left-leaning philosophy's proponents were also environmentalists. The price tampering caused many more people to get into the coffee farming business in Guatemala. These people over-farmed the land and would slash-and-burn rainforrest to make new coffee farms. Oversupply then depressed base prices further.
Posted by Jeff at June 15, 2005 08:55 AM
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