Coffee and US economy

It is much more profitable to consume coffee than to produce it. In the
United States and Europe coffee creates income and jobs and mobilizes
substantial capital; in Latin America it pays hunger wages and sharpens
economic deformation. It provides work for more than 600,000 people in the
United States: those who distribute and sell Latin American coffee there earn
infinitely more than the Brazilians, Colombians, Guatemalans, Salvadorans,
and Haitians who plant and harvest it on the plantations. And incredible as it
seems, coffee--so ECLA tells us--puts more wealth into European state coffers
than it leaves in the hands of the producing countries. In effect, in 1960 and
1961 the total taxes levied on Latin American coffee by European Economic
Community countries amounted to about $700 million, while supplier
countries (in terms of the f.o.b. value of exports) only got $600 millions.

In this kingdom of organized absurdity, natural disasters become blessings
from heaven for the producing countries. They raise prices and permit the
mobilization of accumulated reserves. Fierce frosts wrecked the 1969 harvest
in Brazil and sealed the fate of many producers, especially the weakest, but at
the same time pushed up coffee prices on the world marker and appreciably
lightened the "stock" of 60 million sacks--the equivalent of two-thirds of
Brazil's external debt-which the state had accumulated to defend prices. The
warehoused coffee, progressively deteriorating and losing value, could have
ended up in a bonfire. It would not have been the first time. The collapse of
prices and the shrinkage in consumption after the 1929 crisis caused Brazil to
burn 78 million sacks; thus the efforts of 200,000 people during Five harvests
went up in flames.

Colombia is so dependent on coffee and its external price that "in Antioquia the marriage curve responds sensitively to the coffee-price curve. Par for the course in a dependent structure: even the propitious moment for a declaration of love on
an Antioquian hillside is decided on the New York Stock Exchange."

- Eduardo Galeano.

Take this excerpt with a grain of salt. It's becoming obvious that Eduardo Galeano is a prejudiced, angry liberal. Which makes his book very interesting to read. Un uruguayo picante - you don't see those often