If you’re drinking pre-ground coffee, beware, beware. You could be downing twigs, dust and floor sweepings — especially if you got yr coffee from the big four.

The big four, BTW, are Kraft, Nestle, Sara Lee, and Procter & Gamble. Today, I found out from reading The Coffee Book that in the 1960s, we were getting 45 cups per lb of coffee. By the early 1990, each lb meant nearly 100 cups. Guess where that extra 50 or so cups of “coffee” came from!

I’ve mentioned The Coffee Book a couple times, but here’s an actual review (left: Me and Nina, one of the writers of The Coffee Book).

In just 210 pages (plus notes and bibliography), you get a super-readable history of coffee and coffee trade, as well as a quick and dirty review of the state of all things coffee today. (right: me and Gregory, the other author of The Coffee Book).

Read it, and you’ll get a clear idea of why “technifying” coffee production — something advocated by many detractors of fair trade practices who find organic farming too crunchy for their tastes — often does more harm than good.

Technification tends to destroy forests and natural habitats for birds and animals. Technification adds agrochemicals, which’re of course bad for the health of both the farm worker and the end drinker, but also for the financial survival of the once-independent, organic farmer who’ll have to resort to buying petrochemicals every year:

Instead of providing poor farmers with a steady, higher income, crops such as technified coffee have encouraged unsustainable practices and have often dragged farmers into endless cycles of overproduction followed by precipitious price drops — all dictated by the whims of world coffee prices. Under these circumstances, their very lives are at the mercy of those with little regard for the small farmer — coffee-consuming nations, transnational corporations, and the governmnets of large producing nations — entities far removed from matters on the farm.

In fact, un-technified coffee’s usually best for the coffee farmer, cuz it’s better at bringing capital into less developed nations, and is more redistributive.

As you can imagine, The Coffee Book has a lil something to say about Starbucks too: “Starbucks’ tactic of partially acceding to activists’ demands — or, to put it more charitably, listening to activist concerns as important feedback about its performance — is dramatically different from the no-negotiation policy of Old Coffee.”

Whether this listening tactic’s a step in the right direction — or simple greenwashing — is up to the consumer to decide. What’s clear, however, is that Starbucks certainly has changed the landscape not only of the US, but now of many other countries:

Coffeehouses themselves have even assumed imperialist roles that harken back to early colonial history. When large retail coffeehouse chains such as Starbucks move into a neighborhood, they tend to take over the local coffeehouse scene — and, like a real colonial power, Starbucks’ sphere of influence is spreading insidiously and growing richer all the time … homogenizing the once diverse coffeehouse experience.

A highly recommended read. And I’m not just saying that cuz Nina and Gregory took me to Rube Waddell‘s gig at Leed’s (now Sketchers). There I am to the left, in front of the 12 planets dude –

Enter your zip here to find a local bookstore carrying The Coffee Book :)

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