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What Price Coffee? Are We Paying Too Much, Or Not Paying Enough?
If I were to ponder the carbon miles, the sadness, not smiles, my cup of coffee cost, would it make me pause, change my mind, join the worth cause?
I suspect I’m going to go on drinking coffee, hoping but not investigating the truth, that my coffee is grown, harvested, processed, and delivered, without making anyone get injured, or die, because, well that would be an awful thing, wouldn’t it?
But I’ve actually taken a bit of a look, and it seems death is in fact tied to coffee production in a number of ways. One such way I’ve just read of, is the use of agrichemicals in the growing of coffee, where the usually poor nations grow the plants needed for the coffee beans that get processed into the roasted coffee beans we comparatively rich white folk need to get going first thing in the morning …
Some of the farmers in the countries producing the coffee beans are so poor, they will reuse the containers the chemicals — fungicides, pesticides, and so on come in. Some of them may be cut up to be used as plates to dine from.
And because these people are poor, they may not have the protective gear, farmers in richer countries use to protect them from the poisonous chemicals. There are many sad stories, women dying from the soiled clothes of their family members, who…
