Essay On Coffee Globalization

Coffee Is Spilling Everywhere One of the fastest growing industries today is the coffee industry, especially Starbucks, as it has a seven percent annual growth rate (Goldschein 1). These days, it is now impossible to go into a town without seeing a single Starbucks shop due to their intensification and stretching in globalization. Globalization is the exchange of ideas, products, and culture between nations. Thanks to globalization, Coffee has become the world’s second most traded commodity, and as a result it has negatively impacted the environment (Schmidt 1). Furthermore, the growth of coffee industries has created a system where coffee farmers are exploited by big coffee companies, and coffee communities with different coffee cultures …show more content…
Today’s coffee beans are now farmed under direct sunlight which require “farmers [to] cut down the tree canopies that shaded their shrubs” (Satrah 1). One of the effects of this action is the loss of habitats for various “animals, insects, flora, and fauna”, and replacing them with “intensive ‘sun cultivation’, where coffee is grown in plantations” (Light 1). According to Moore, over 2.5 million acres of forest are being cleared in Central America, “and consequently insects and animals that lived in the canopies of their trees have lost their homes” (Moore). The second effect of the intense plantations of coffee beans is chemical contaminations—from fertilizers—of waterways which destroy ecosystems and poses a threat to people and animals since it is toxic. The waste from coffee plantations travel to rivers and waterways, and triggers “eutrophication of water systems and robbing aquatic plants and wildlife of essential oxygen” (Moore). The continuation of cutting down trees and polluting water for coffee bean production contributes to the global climate change, and at the current rate of the coffee industry’s globalization, damages to the environment from coffee will soon be irreparable if actions are not