Coffee markets
BBC Radio 4 takes a look at how one of our favourite commodities, coffee, gets from grower to that expensive cup of cappuccino.
What are the costs?
The human costs, the environmental costs?
Coffee comes from the poorest regions of the world, where poverty, exploitation, child labour, corruption are rife.
What guarantees do the various certifications give us, or are they worthless bits of paper, brands to make us feel good as we sip our cappuccino?
That is what Simon Evans endeavours to find out.
As David Graeber describes in Debt, markets were created by the state. The state controlled the mines, the mint. Coins were used to pay the armed soldiers. Markets provide a marketplace for the people to sell their goods and services in exchange for coins of the realm. The coins were then used to pay taxes.
The market is now a myth, the only true market we see are the fruit and vegetable stalls in the town square. All other markets are rigged, be that when we shop in a supermarket or coffee is traded as a commodity.
Even the proliferation of coffee shops is a rigged market. Costa and tax-dodging Starbucks serving their undrinkable coffee blitz a town with their coffee shops, making it nigh impossible for indie coffee shops to gain a foothold, and often without planning consent, to which local planning authorities turn a blind eye.
An example of a rigged market is in Guildford where there is a desire to have a coffee stall on the monthly farmers market serving high quality coffee, beans for sale from a local coffee roaster. This is being blocked by the local council, allegedly at the behest of coffee chains.
What is a coffee shop? A place to meet friends, a pleasant relaxing ambience to enjoy a cappuccino, an office, an art gallery, somewhere to learn more about coffee.
Certification is another brand, a worthless guarantee to make us feel good.
There are over a hundred species of coffee, commercially we grow two species, Robusta (Coffea canephora syn. Coffea robusta) cheap commodity coffee, Aribica (Coffea arabica) quality coffee.
Brighton, the location to be spoilt for choice with coffee shops, North Laine not a chain to be seen.
A somewhat lighthearted and irrelevant look at how the coffee market functions.
