Tuesday, November 27

 
The Price of Cheaper Coffee

Coffee prices have swung wildly over the years: way up when a freeze wipes out the crop, way down when overplanting produces a surplus. That's what's happening now around the world: a glut of cheap coffee from elsewhere in the world is threatening the livelihoods of Brazilian coffee growers. One could gloat a bit, I guess, because cheap Brazilian soybeans help keep down U.S. soybean prices (spoken as one whose mom grows soybeans in Illinois), but we're talking about poor people who will have even less to live on. Read this story from the November 27 BBC daily email.


Juan Valdez: Another Victim of the Coffee Crisis

The coffee glut has hit hard in Colombia, too, so much so that Juan Valdez, the symbol of Colombian coffee, has been laid off. This New York Times story has a bit of fun with the idea but also reminds readers that the Juan Valdez commercials countered the image of Colombia as a cocaine-riddled nation. (Too bad the story is datelined "Medellin")
posted by Unknown 9:18 AM