The Reality of Plummeting Coffee Prices: The Double Entendre

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The Double Entendre Behind Cheap Coffee

Plummeting coffee prices have hit farmers incredibly hard. Images of starving families, gaunt bodies, and desperate crowds in Ethiopia are common in the news. During difficult times, farmers cannot rely on safety nets such as unemployment insurance. For these farmers, a dip in coffee prices does not mean cutting back on luxuries or comforts. Instead, it means pulling their children out of school. And during prolonged hardship, farmers have to watch hunger ravage their families.

In Ethiopia, a number of factors such as climate, education, access to seeds, and poverty are barriers to changing crops. There aren't very many different crops a farmer can successfully grow outside a few key plant types. This results in a less than ideal solution to tumbling coffee prices.

One alternative cash crop for Ethiopian farmers is a local narcotic plant known as khat (or chat), which is illegal in most of the Western world. However, the price for khat is considerably higher and more stable than coffee. During hard times, coffee farmers often turn to it as a means of supplementing their income. The farmers in Black Gold are aware of the narcotics illicit status. But that doesn't stop them from growing and selling it when their families are starving survival is foremost to the farmers.

A hungry family places pressure on the farmers

This pattern of turning to narcotic cash crops is not unique to Ethiopian coffee farmers. In Afghanistan, an increasing number of farmers have been growing poppies, the raw material for opium, despite a notable decrease in cultivation levels over the last several years. Although some theorists point towards a Taliban-orchestrated operation to increase drug production, an equally reasonable explanation is that in this war-torn nation, impoverished farmers are simply growing the crops that can be sold for enough money to support their families. Most likely, both theories are at least somewhat true.

The same theories may also hold true regarding the cocaine production in Columbia. The Colombian terrorist group known as FARC has a clear connection to cocaine production. However, the cultivation of the infamous coca plants is also a result of poor farmers attempting to make ends meet. And much like the coffee business, the real money is made by the middlemen, which are the members of the FARC.