"Less well-known are the damaging effects of these unequal power relations embedded in global coffee networks: threatened livelihoods, greater poverty, malnutrition, deforestation, and out-migration. A "bigger, faster, cheaper" mentality has created a dynamic that exploits the most vulnerable at the bottom of the supply chain."
-John Thackara, Worldchanging.com-
Read the rest of Thackara's "Alternative Trade Networks and the Coffee System" to learn more about the issues facing the coffee industry as well as proposed solutions that would create a fair and equitable situation for the world's 25 million families that grow and produce coffee.
For more reading, check out "Confronting the Coffee Crisis."