Plantation of Coffee – Today and in Former Times
Before coffee took a higher value than wheat or coal, the cultivation ran
off under substantially more favorable conditions.
The cultivations took place under biggest caution and perfection to always
breed considered to grow a long living and resistant plant. The soil was not
as strongly loaded in former times as it is the case today. Therefore it had
enough time to regenerate. This problem becomes evident also from our current
agriculture and use of land. Besides the coffee fruits were harvested if their
colour was deep red. Today there are two ways of harvest. The first method
is very expensive, because the coffee fruits are only picked if they are deep
red. It is so expensive because it takes a long time to find and pick the ripe
fruits and there are also needed much workers. An additional problem is
also
the yield. There isn’t as many yield as it would be with the second method
of harvest, but just regarding the amount of fruits. Of course the quality
of this first method is much higher.
To be much profitable, there was a more effective harvest method needed. The
coffee plants are all harvested at the same time. All fruits are picked even
those who are not yet ripe. So the workers can be replaced by machines, who
just pick every fruit of the plants. But with the machines, a new problem comes:
They have always to function, and if not, someone has to fix it.
There are two reasons that are against the use of the machines: The machines
harvest the whole plant, but they leave a big mess. There are some sheets,
fallen on the ground, fruits that have gone off or some branches of the coffee
bush. This whole mess has to be cleared up by human workers. A second point
is the guarantee of enough jobs on the plantations, although the employees
have a very deep salary for their hard work on the plantation.
When we are right talking about the employees, let’s have a look at the
past.
At the beginning of the plantation of coffee, the payment was no problem. Every
employee got his reasonable salary. But with the uprising demand of coffee
in numerous countries, more and more slaves were used for the work on the plantations.
Their one and only right was to work, and with the rising demand the conditions
for the slaves were even worse.
Today, fortunately, we have again the old conditions, nearly the old condition.
Not all workers are well paid, but they receive help from organizations like
Max Havelaar.
They make sure that the employees on the plantations get a fair
salary and that there is a constant and high price of the raw coffee. Additionally
there is a acceptance warranty for the raw products ensured.
After this small addition, we are going to look at the last but important topic
dealing with the plantation of coffee. Insecticides and pestizides found their
firm place on the plantations, not just in our gardens. With numerous not harmless
chemicals the infestation of parasits can be dammed. But after some years,
the parasits get immune against this toxic chemicals and a new one has to be
used. This fact leads to higher ground pollution and also to a decrease of
our diversity of species.
In former times, plants were crossed to grow new and more resistant species.
Today we just use chemicals to work against the parasits. Let’s look
at an example for such a crossing of two plants:
In the origin, a mature coffea (latin name for our coffee plant) could reach
a height of six meters. The harvest on the top of the tree, resulted in a problem,
so one tried to grow smaller species of the coffea. A today’s coffee
bush reaches in a mature level two to three meters.
To diminish the abuse of fertilizer, there are criteria for the worldwide coffee
plantation, that one can be sure about the content materials of a coffee product.
We see, that in the last centuries many things changed in cultivating coffee.
Many things got better during this time, but other unfortunately got worse.
So for us humans it got better on cost of our environment.
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