Paying More for Coffee?
You may have noticed that you have been paying more for coffee lately here are some reasons why:
1. Supply Vs Demand- more people are drinking coffee than ever before and less people are wanting to grow it.
2. Climate – like all crops coffee cultivation is affected by the climate and as a plant needs a lot of tender loving care it also takes a long time to mature and thus produce a crop. For example the tsunami in Indonesia has decreased crops by 30% and heavy rainfall in Columbia and Nigcaragua has damaged this years crops. This in turn increases prices.
3. Fair and sustainable – this has been a hot topic over the last few years. Coffee is a very labour intensive crop to grow often being hand harvested and processed and its important that the people behind it get a fair wage and treated fairly, which hasn’t always been the case. Look for fair trade or more recently direct trade when purchasing stay informed to make a wise decision. Its still a complicated issue and in fact there was an article in The Guardian discussing it recently.
In every part of life you must pay for quality and support those behind the product, in the same way you would visit a fine dining restaurant on occasion maybe the way to go is to buy gourmet coffee a little less often and truly savor it.
Source:
- http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/3Zk668/www.seriouseats.com/2011/02/why-coffee-will-and-should-cost-more-coffee-price-increase.html
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