World market
Coffee is, following oil, the second most important good on the world market.
The main cultivation region (  Cultivation Areas )lies in Latin America, Africa and Asia, but 85
% of all coffee drinkers live in western industrialized countries. Annually,
approximately 6.6 tons of coffee are produced. The weather and the amount of
produced coffee as well as its quality have a big influence on the world market
price. The one who suffers of the different price fluctuations are the owners
of the plantation as well as their employees. If there is a good harvest and
large amounts of raw coffee are on the market, the price per kilo decreases.
The owners of the planations destroy large amounts of their harvest, to decrease
the amount of raw coffee and as a result to increase the price.
In bad harvests, the raw coffee price increases, but the small farmers earn,
against all expectations, not better, because the amount of sold coffee is
to small. Additionally much coffee farmers are highly dept. Therefore they
try to sell their raw coffee as quick as possible. The middlemen take an advantage
from the time pressure of the coffee farmers and buy their raw good to extremely
low prices.
As a result the coffee farmers earn to less and live under the subsistence
level, and have to take up credits, which they can never pay back. (See also Fair Trade )
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