Coffee!

Coffee! This one has a lot of pictures, but I think it´ll be good. A couple of weeks ago, I visited a coffee plantation that was connected to a museum of Mayan music. I got to drink coffee and listen to music, like at a coffee shop, but with learning. Que bueno. An aside- i have begun to think in spanglish. I think this is only a couple of steps away from thinking in spanish. But the coffee...Im going to learn everybody about coffee and its production and then I will also, because I have the time, moralize at you about the merits of fair trade coffee. Im sorry if it bothers you, but in the end this is my blog and anyway, you´re still reading.

Okay, a coffee tree produces flowers, like the one above. They are the cutest little white blossoms, made all the more cute with the knowledge that one day they will be caffeinating me. They smell like the perfume of the most seductive women - the ones that wear silk and carry long cigarrette holders - the scent hangs in the air even in the mountains where it is dry. It is a scent that you could get lost in for days. When the flowers begin to ripen, they create the little berries that most flowers produce. There are two seeds inside each berry. We know these as beans. When the beans are red, like in the picture, they are ready to harvest. I ate one - it was sweet and green tasting, a little slimy, like starfruit or lychee, green tasting like summer smells.



This is the method of killing bugs that organic farms use, called integrated pest management. They do this in the states too, mostly in fruit orchards, but probably they dont use gasoline...this bottle holds gas in the bottom and something good smellig in the top. the theory is that bugs smell the goods, get stuck in the bad below, and die peaceful drunken deaths. It must work, because these things are all over the plantation.

Whoops. This picture is a little bit out of order, but when the red skins come off of the beans, they make a giant stinkin´ compost pile to use for fertilizer on the trees.

They use a water bath to get the skins off...

and this dude helps them along through their bath...

after the skins are all washed off, the beans (they are still gold, called cafe de oro) are dried in the sun for a couple of weeks - that is my guide showing us the dried coffee beans.
Back in the day, the ladies hated coffee - i wonder what they would think of the coffee klatsch gossip circles of today - but they actually hated coffeeshops, because their husbands would hang out there and talk politics until all hours of the night...

So, then the coffee is either shipped to a developed country to be roasted or roasted on site. Because i was at a museum, the coffee was roasted on site. This is an old roaster.
The longer it is roasted, the darker the roast (mmm. duh). The darker the roast, the less caffeine, and the more smoky and charred the taste. In guatemala, they drink their coffee dark. In the states, I drink it light because, like i said, i think dark coffee tastes burned.


These are some cool old style coffee grinders. They put my p.o.s. coffeemate to shame.

Okay, the fair trade spiel.

In guatemala, a lot of people work to grow the coffee that we put on our tables. This is awesome, and I thank them daily for it. But Guatemalans dont get to drink the coffee that they produce, because in guatemala it is too expensive. Just look at the table up above...sixteen percent, sixteen cents on the dollar stays in the country where the coffee is produced - why?

because the money and the power lies in the hands of developed countries such as the united states. so the workers arent getting a fair wage for working harder, seriously, every day than i have worked in my life. They dont have education, advocates, or economic influence to be able to make a case for themselves, to demand fair pay. Unions? don´t bet on it. The guatemalan government doesnt have time for luxuries such as welfare or healh care for its people. it doesnt have the money for it either.

Fair trade was developed because free trade in the capitalist system(supply and demand economics) is not good for countries that have resources and no money or power. Because all of the demand for coffee is in the developed countries, places like guatemala have to take what we give them as far as price. We would never think to pay our workers such a low wage, but because we dont have to see these workers and we want everything to be cheap cheap cheap, we dont think about the fact that they work for dollars a day out in the sun.

So fair trade basically means that workers, plantation owners, everyone gets a fair price according to the world market for their labor and product. It takes into consideration the fact that we in the developed world have a lot of power over the market. it isnt free, like the name implies, because it is built on the backs of poor farmers and laborers in other countries - even in US territories. here is a link to the fair trade foundation in america. and to Peace Coffee, a Minneapolis roaster that makes the best coffee that I have ever tasted! You should drink it!

It doesnt stop at coffee, though. In guatemala i have been realizing again and again the need for local markets for our food - if only so that Guatemalan people can actually eat the food that they grow here instead of exporting all of it! buy local!

Okay, I love you,
Goodbye.