It has been vilified as a public health hazard, and praised as the boon of artists and thinkers. Its propagation led to the spread of slavery, the subjugation of the Indians, and the destruction of rainforests around the world. Yet, growing, processing, exporting, roasting, brewing and selling coffee provides a livelihood (of sorts) for over 20 million people. And shade-grown coffee offers a valuable habitat for migratory birds and other wildlife.
Today, coffee is at the forefront of a swelling global grassroots movement for fair trade and sustainability, and the time has never been more ripe for telling the story of this wildly popular bean. Consumers throughout the first world happily shell out three bucks for a Starbucks latté, roughly equivalent to the daily wage of the labourer at a coffee plantation. Remarkably, the historical forces that have made this inequity possible may now be converging towards a more positive outcome for third world coffee growers who have rarely received their fair share of coffee richness.Part One, The Irresistible Bean
Part One, The Irresistible Bean, carries us back to coffee's origins in Ethiopia and its triumphant spread over five continents, sparking revolution, controversy, creativity, business and slavery all along the way. We see the first coffee house traditions which begin on dirt floors and evolve into more refined Arabic home versions. Venetian latté develops a cachet that is the model for Western coffee-marketing --450 years later. The French cast off the monarchy, Americans toss their tea into Boston harbor, Haitian plantation slaves rebel, all under the heady aroma of the bean. But the harshest and most enduring form of coffee slavery has not yet begun. Part One ends when a Brazilian military officer and gigolo smuggles a single coffee plant into Brazil. The innocent gift he received from a French lover will change the face of Latin America and the world forever.
Part Two, Gold in Your Cup uses an elegant contemporary competition created to elevate the quality of coffee in Brazil to frame a portrait of 19th century coffee-fueled oppression in Latin America. Bitter Brews takes us back to examine coffee's stranglehold in Brazil and Central America, leading to coffee barons, the subjugation of Indians and Africans, the destruction of the rainforests and, ironically, the evolution of both democracy and dictatorships. Events are fueled by increased consumption in North America, due to brilliant marketing and the new mass-production of branded coffee,but the quality of the coffee descends to an all time low. In the Depression era, Brazilian dictator and patriot Getulio Vargas burns surplus coffee to maintain market prices, leading Pan American leaders try to convince Americans that a fair price for coffee is their only way out of their desperate poverty, but their pleas fall on deaf ears. After World War II, Cold War paranoia complicates matters and the U.S. invades Guatemala. Subway tickets rise from 5 cents to 10 with no fuss, but Americans are not yet ready to pay a social consciousness premium for their coffee. Vargas commits suicide over the low price of coffee and it looks like the cycle of poverty and oppression will never end. But in urban centers across North America, people like Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan are leading the emergence of a brand new coffeehouse culture. No one knows it yet, but the new bohemians represent Latin America's best hope for a better future. They possess a heightened sense of social justice and best of all they're hooked on dark, rich, quality coffee.
Part Three, The Perfect Cup, heralds what some coffee experts have called "the romantic age of coffee". North Americans re-discover what their European counterparts have known all along; coffee is better when it's quality coffee, and the best place to find it is in the relaxed and friendly atmosphere of the cafe. A quirky collection of vagabond hippies emerge from the 70’s to create mega-chains like Starbuck's and Second Cup in the 80’s. Coffee becomes the first global industry to experiment with Fair Trade practices (defined as coffee grown by co-operatives without the use of wage labourers and with respect for the environment) and a new breed of co-operative farmer is born in Central America. And, activists wake-up to the fact that a pound of designer coffee in North America represents a full week's wage to coffee growers in the producing countries. They organize under the banner of "Fair Trade" and start to pressure the mega-chains to share their new wealth with producing countries. The new coffee consumers expect social justice in their morning cup. Consequently, marketing executives begin to realize that "fair trade" is more than ethics, it's good business. Consumers feel better knowing that drinking coffee is contributing to sustainable agriculture practices and increased profit for the small grower. As we enter the new millennium, the fair trade coffee bean remains a small part of the overall coffee market. But, with consumer consciousness on the rise, coffee represents the best hope for modeling a new relationship between the "have" and "have not" hemispheres. And in Cyber-cafés around the world, enlightened coffee drinkers and activists are making sure that the fair trade model continues to grow.
Throughout the series BLACK COFFEE we explore the powerful themes that run through coffee's history:
1) colonialism and injustice,
2) community and social bonding,
3) revolution,
4) environmental degradation, and
5) international business and politics.
