Well, here we are in beautiful Antigua, Guatemala. This colonial-era city is surrounded by lush fincas (plantations) where IMHO they grow some of the best coffee in the world. The coffee is exported to countries such as the US, Europe, and Japan... you may have even tasted Guatemalan coffee at Starbuck's. This afternoon our group took a tour of La Azotea, a coffee finca and museum.
Coffee trivia: After oil, coffee is the second-largest traded commodity in the world. Around the globe, coffee lovers like me drink more than 2 billion cups each day! Mmmm... delicious, just give me a strong cup and my day is off to a good start!
On our tour we learned how coffee is grown, harvested, toasted, and prepared for export. The tour was interesting and educational and, I learned much about the coffee industry in Guatemala. Sadly, coffee workers are paid the equivalent of ~$5 a day or ~$100 a month even though imported Guatemalan coffee can be very expensive.
Why? One factor is the middleman's cut and the growers' profit margin. Another factor, and this is solely my opinion, poor hungry people will work for less than the minimum monthly wage of ~$195, hardly enough to subsist on as it is. But it is better than nothing, I suppose, even though it's very hard manual labor to hand pick 100 pounds of coffee a day.
The Coffee Museum
May 24th, 2009 at 05:15 am
May 24th, 2009 at 01:23 pm 1243171394
May 24th, 2009 at 04:22 pm 1243182147
May 24th, 2009 at 05:38 pm 1243186732
May 24th, 2009 at 06:41 pm 1243190477
that is why i buy fairtrade coffee