Are you a coffee addict? Then you might feel discomforted to know that what we drink in the name of coffee is responsible for a gamut of miseries for ourselves and for thousands of other lives.Coffee is the second-largest traded commodity after oil. Most coffee supplied to North America comes from plantations in South America, Mexico, Indonesia and Africa. Coffee grows naturally under the canopy of rainforests.
Most of the 25 million people growing coffee do so on small plots of land. These farms are typically family owned. The farmers here employ traditional organic-farming techniques inherited from their grandparents that sustain not only the health of the soil, but also the forests under which coffee is grown.
However, in recent times, large coffee corporations from North America have started owning huge tracts of lands in these forests. In addition to clearing away forests, they use fertilizers and pesticides that are deemed prohibited for human use. Next only to tobacco, coffee is sprayed with more chemicals than any other product consumed by humans. Their worst crime of all is that the poor plantation workers are not even paid minimum wages for their livelihood. The situation is no better for our traditional independent farmers since they too, unable to compete with these giant corporations and their destructive routes to farming, are forced into poverty until they give up or perish.
What can we coffee lovers do to ensure that the coffee we drink comes from beans that were grown in an environmentally friendly manner and which reward those deserving farmers with decent living conditions? The only way is to switch to drinking organic coffee. Fair-trade certification for organic coffee demands that the workers be paid fairly, and also given access to education and adequate medical care, thus ensuring their sustainability. Furthermore, this enables farmers to grow shade-grown organic coffee that keeps the forests as intact as possible.
The great news is that there is very little or no price difference now between the leading coffee brands and most organic coffee. Of course, as more people switch to organic coffee, the price keeps lowering still.
When I discovered all this, I immediately switched to organic coffee and I found almost every organic variety tastes better than even the best ones that I have had before the switch. Is this just my imagination? Try it and discover for yourself.
Organic coffee is available at most cafs and stores both in and around campus.
You only have to ask for it. Where it is not available, still ask for it – for if there is adequate public demand, the owners and managers would be more than willing to fortify their stocks with organic coffee.