The humble coffee bean is one of the most important and actively traded commodities in the world. It doesn’t take more than a glance at American coffee consumption stats to understand why.
In a 2015 Gallup poll, 64% of Americans reported drinking at least one cup of coffee per day and 2.7 on average. The United States imports about 2.8 billion pounds of green coffee every year, and Americans consume just over nine pounds of coffee per capita annually.
If you’re anything like me, your morning coffee is a necessity, so early in my graduate career I decided to do a little research on it. I found a fascinating and somewhat disturbing story encompassing ecology, economics, globalization and finance – one that all coffee drinkers should know about.
Out With Shade-grown
Beginning in the 1970s, many Latin American coffee farmers began to convert their farms to what is called “technified” production systems. In response to disease outbreaks in Brazil during the early ‘70s, large growers began to search for new, heartier coffee varietals.
