During the pandemic I've hopped around between different creative pursuits cause I'm a noncommittal dweeb. One thing I tried my hand at was making youtube videos, and while researching coffee production I was surprised by just how fucked it really is. Everyone knows that coffee is produced with slavery, but the global economy's relationship with coffee is terrifying. People are not addicted to coffee, society is. In fact, coffee shops are the fastest growing part of the restaurant business. The West is so addicted to coffee that it is the second most in-demand commodity behind only crude oil. It is also (disputed) the second most popular drink in the world behind water, though this fluctuates with soft drinks and tea. We produce so much fucking coffee. Here are some numbers. All data is from 2020.
3 key figures: 1 coffee bean is ~.1325g, 1 cup of coffee is 10g of beans, 1 bag of coffee (unit of measure for international production) is 60kg.
Consumption: In 2020 the world produced 168.5 million bags of coffee, weighing 10,110,000 metric tons of fresh beans. That's the same as:
MASS
- Blue Whales: Average mass is 110 metric tons= 91,909 Blue Whales (Second level of abstraction that's not as helpful as it is funny: Average whale length is 27m x 91,909 = 2,481.5km Burj Khalifa is .8298km at the tip x 91,909 = 2,990.5 Burj Khalifa’s American football field: .9144km x 91,909 = 2,713.8 football fields)
-
Heaviest recorded Elephant: Mass of 1.22 tons 8,286,885.25 Fat Fucking Elephants
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Nimitz class aircraft carrier: Mass of 100,000 tons 101.1 Aircraft carriers
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Great Pyramid of Giza: Estimated 5.3 million metric tons 1.91 Great Pyramids
VOLUME
- Coffee Beans: Density of beans: 561kg/m^3 10,110,000,000kg/(561kg/m3)=18,021,390.37m3=18,021.39km^3 of beans produced in 2020
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Great Pyramid 18,021.39km3/2,583.283km3=~7 Great Pyramids
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Lake Tanganyika (3rd largest lake on earth by volume) 18,900 km3/18,021.39km^3=about the same.
What horrifies me is the shear number of beans that slaves had to pick by hand. 60kg per bag/.1325g (mass of 1 bean) x 168.5 mil bags = 76,301,886,792,452.83 beans
Thank you NeverGoOutside for pointing out that I used the total population of the US and EU. I did the math again using the 15-64 demographics because they're the biggest coffee drinkers and it's a pain in the ass to factor in the elderly. Here's the revised population data:
EU:
Coffee drinking population (15-64): 286.62 million
Imported bags: 49 million
49,000,000*6000=294,000,000,000 cups
294,000,000,000 cups/ 286,620,000 drinkers= 1025.75 per year or 2.8 cups per day
USA:
Coffee drinking population (15-64): 218.8 million
Imported bags: 26 million
26,000,000*6000=156,000,000,000/218.8 million = 713 (rounded from 712.98) cups per year or 2 cups per day (rounded from 1.95)
In short, I'm sick of doing math, stop buying coffee. I'm probably gonna do chocolate next week.
I hope I didn't fuck up the formatting of this post. Edit: I fucked up the formatting
True, but the Zapatistas can't supply the entire world with coffee. Fun fact, the 2 biggest producers of coffee in 2018 were Brazil (unsurprisingly) and the wildcard: Vietnam! Thanks IMF
Have they gotten their production back up yet? I remember seeing their warehouses were attacked by paramilitaries or something
aren't many of these supposedly "collective" farms in Chiapas now just privately owned coffee plantations?
I’m sure this has been plugged many times before on this website, but obligatory link to Zapatista co-op coffee: https://schoolsforchiapas.org/store/coffee-corn-and-agricultural/zapatista-coffee/
I hesitate to ask this because I feel like I know the answer, but is fairtrade certified actually really better or is it some bullshit they slap on so people can feel better while the same horrible shit happens but the farmer gets five cents more?
It's one of the few products I can consistently buy fairtrade (even at the supermarket) and it's not much more expensive than the other stuff which makes me suspicious
Fair trade products and the NGO's that govern them are a very dubious business. Especially with coffee, the NGO's that sell fair trade coffee go into communities often pay producers about the same as what they were getting before, pocketing most of the difference in price for themselves. Also, when NGO's start fair trade operations, companies that sell fuel and fertilizer typically up their own prices, leaving the farmers with the same pay they had before or less. This is not a universal principle, but it happens far more frequently than it should and is very difficult to document because the organizations that are supposed to regulate these things are themselves NGO's who can receive substantial amounts of funding from the fair trade companies themselves and local governments who don't want the nature of their practices revealed.
"Direct trade" is what I've heard, or look into the business to see if they are more specific about what they call "fair trade". Where the roasters go directly to the farmers for their coffee and pay a reasonable price.
An example I know of is Equal Exchange who work with democratically organized farmers and trade directly. Their US based roasting and distribution also operates as a worker-owned co-op.
The sheer amount of coffee we produce is already unsustainable. There is no source to which everyone could switch that would be sustainable without everyone drinking less coffee and coffee becoming substantially more expensive. Our system now does not even meet the full demand for coffee. On an individual level yes, one person getting ethically sourced coffee is better morally for them, but it's not possible for everyone to do that. The more we switch to sustainable methods the more expensive coffee becomes by virtue of having to pay people way more, making coffee a product reserved for the upper class.
There is no source to which everyone could switch that would be sustainable without everyone drinking less coffee and coffee becoming substantially more expensive
The same is true of basically everything in the context of climate change and sustainability, as an aside: we have to consume less, not differently.
Sadly it is much more difficult to get actual wage data than to get import data, but generally speaking the conditions for picking coffee beans are horrendous. The amount of resources we as a society devote to coffee product continues a cycle of neocolonial primary exploitation that enriches capitalists while destroying the lands and lives of colonized peoples. It takes resources to grow this much coffee without it being extremely expensive, which is the reason colonizers spread coffee production around the global south and subjugated people into plantation systems that made them fabulously wealthy, all for the sake of coffee. When the West first experienced coffee it was accessible only to the upper nobility and became a socioeconomic status symbol that other Westerners tried to imitate, much like tea and spices at the same time. The demand for these goods was so high that people in Br*tain, the Netherlands, and other colonial powers ya know, did colonialism. If you wanna learn about this process I highly recommend "Tastes of Paradise" by Wolfgang Schivelbusch.
much like tea and spices at the same time
and sugar! one of the main legs of the triangle trade
EDIT: shit sorry, forgot I was in a three year old thread. but this was a GOOD post and I am just reading it now
I'm fundamentally against numbers being high so this still appeals. All numbers should be lower.
Did you know that you can divide numbers by other numbers that are similar in scale, and get smaller numbers that also tell you something about the bigger numbers?
I now realize I didn't want to see understandable numbers. Puts into perspective the absolutely not reasonable amount of coffee I drink even by first world people standards
If coffee drinking is widespread in half the world, that's about 1 cup per adult per day in that half.
I buy my coffee from the Zapatistas so I don't feel bad at all. Probably the only way to get it without slavery. :bean:
Shipping costs outside the United States are very expensive!
Due to extremely high cost of shipping coffee overseas, Schools for Chiapas no longer fills international orders for coffee.
:sadness:
You just go on the schools for chiapas website and buy it there in whatever size you want. I recommend buying a hand grinder and then doing whole bean so you don't get roaches in your brew.
Worked in the coffee industry for a decade. Can confirm this is just about the only way I found to ethically source coffee. Makes the best cold brew by far btw
This is super interesting stuff. The early industrial period would probably have been very different if it weren't for the various drugs and drug-adjacent substances plundered from the colonies, coffee, tea, sugar, even opium, etc. With all those stimulants, workers could be pressed to work even harder and longer.
Uh, I meant, uh, if that period had been different, ours would have been different too, uh...
This post brought to you by Purdue Pharma.
Mentioned this elsewhere in the thread but there's a great book about this exact process: "Tastes of Paradise" by Wolfgang Schivelbusch
It takes 140 liters of water to grow the beans for 1 cup of coffee https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/water-use-coffee-sustainable-profitable
Honestly it's pretty fucked up that there are socially acceptable drugs to be addicted to such as coffee or nicotine, yet people who are addicted to other drugs, say meth or heroin, are treated like absolute trash. Everything is set up to completely dehumanize people who are addicted to an arbitrary selection of drugs so the prison industry can get more slaves.
It's cultural class distinction and nothing else. How addictive something is varies so fucking much person to person. And then you have to decide if you're targetting addiction or societal effect as well. You just let a junkie have their dope and they are no threat to anyone. Stimulants are their own thing, an opiate addict will go to extremes to get money to buy dope but a crackhead will do the same and can easily be a problem to others as a result of getting high as well as I've seen all too often, stimulants make you go crazy cause you need to sleep to not go crazy... I personally don't know what to do with that. But opiate addiction with a steady medical fix will kill you way slower and hurt your life way less than alcohol addiction which is just a free for all.
I don't mean this in a judgemental way at all, I do all the drugs bit have only ever managed to get hooked on smokes and booze. There are also plenty of perfectly reasonable crackheads and tweeters but it's a tougher battle there.
I had a pretty serious opiate addiction a little while ago. Thankfully I'm four years clean now! And yeah, what you say about opioid addiction is absolutely true. The largest reason opioid addiction is so harmful is because of criminalization.
The black market charges ridiculous prices for Heroin that could be produced for pennies on the gram if it were legal. This causes people to steal to fund their habits.
Dealers, looking for ways to stretch their product, cut all kinds of disgusting shit into it. Baking soda, sugars, talcum powder, antihistamines... But the worst of it is fentanyl. When you buy heroin, you're basically getting a new product with varying potency each time. This varying potency kills people all the time when they get a more potent batch than they were used to. This is exponentially worse when the product is cut with fentanyl, an absolutely vile drug that is a hundred fold more potent than morphine. The vast majority of fentanyl use happens nonconsensually when it is cut into heroin unknown to the user. Since it is so potent, dealers often are unable to mix it with the rest of the product homogenously enough. This leaves hotspots in the powder where the fentanyl concentration is insanely high, and these kill. All of this is a result of the unregulated nature of the black market.
The solution is to end the war on drugs, allow people with a history of opioid addiction to have their drug of choice prescribed to them by a doctor. Methadone clinics almost get this right, but they have so many rules and hoops to jump through that often it's easier to just get back on heroin. We need to stop with this patronizing attitude toward people who suffer from addiction, let them decide how they want to live their lives. The current system dehumanizes us at every stop and often kills or enslaves us. It needs to end.
I have very little experience with stimulants and people who are addicted to them, so I can't comment on what you say about that, but you are right on the mark with regards to opioid addiction.
I got a lot of my info from my roommate who has been addicted for a good twenty years or so. He's on methadone now and I guess doctors here will fucking up your dose of the pharma reports you've missed doses (you have to drink it at the counter, you could cheek but still no reason to up the dose) requests for lower doses are always denied and usually met with a later upside. It's clearly not meant to get people off opiates but keep em on methadone.
I had to stop drinking coffee because of a medical condition (seizures, absolutely no fun) and fuck that was rough. Still is, I relapse every once in a while when I'm stressed.
Quitting caffeine is definitely not the best experience, especially when you have responsibilities such as school or a job. I take it occasionally now too, usually in the form of black tea. Caffeine is just so ubiquitous, it's hard to stay away from.
I have yet to research tea production, but it's on the list. I've been kinda fixated on commodities in the global economy and neocolonial systems of production lately.
Most of the tea I buy is from China so I at least hope that some of what I pay goes to the CCP.
holy shit dude nobody cares about this dumb struggle session anymore except you and your discord server, log the fuck off
If I was to go to Muslims and tell them they must stop drinking coffee, and that they should be able to handle Ramadan without it, then followed it up with constant insults for days, they would be right to think I am being racist. You need to calm down, what you are doing is not productive.
In mountinous terrian, where most coffee likes to grow, it's impossible to get machinery in to pick. That's why it's all by hand. The real cost of okay paid labor is what it is in kona. 60$ a lb. And rising with every year.
The fact that it has to be picked by hand also drives the use of slaves, particularly children who similar to the chocolate industry are "loaned out" by their parents to coffee companies because they have no other choice
Imagine crushing beans that were picked by slaves just to flavour your water like bitter dirt instead of just sucking it straight from the tap. Couldn't be me.
Is the production of caffeine tablets just as fucked up? If it's just extracted from the coffee beans, than yes. But it could be synthesized from scratch in a lab.
Now I'm just imagining someone in a garage caffeine lab getting raided by cops who think it's a meth lab.
Anyway, when I was in high school I had a terrible caffeine addiction, and caffeine tablets helped me ween off.
I don't know about how we synthesize caffeine, but I sure hope it is.
10.1 million metric tons per year, and 10g of beans per cup, comes out to about 130 cups per year for each human being on Earth.
That's right. That's an insane amount of energy we spend producing this unnecessary product with a 350 year old colonial history behind it. (I'm picking that age somewhat arbitrarily because the Dutch transplanted the first coffee tree onto Java in the late 17th century)
I switched to Kombucha, granted it was the palpitations from my coffee addiction that caused me to switch. Once you get used to the Kombucha taste, its so much better, gives me a ton of energy and a minimal crash. Its also grab and go instead of having to make a whole pot. I still enjoy a cup from time to time but Im glad that im not contributing to this industry anymore.
