Amid growing concerns over labor conditions, coffee farmers are increasingly turning to automation.
Doesn't this mean that workers will be put out of job? Between automation replacing workers and workers working in inhumane conditions, which is a less evil choice?
For privacy, the families erected walls made of coffee-filter rags.
Wow these details paint such a painfully vivid picture of their inhumane living condition...
debt bondage, degrading conditions and long work hours.
This is a little funny to read for me.... How common these conditions are in so many jobs in America are but we don't dare to question or disobey it as long as as the number on your check is tempting enough
ensure that their coffee is sourced from Brazilian farms that are free of slave labor.
This is a pretty interesting and novel phenomenon. Companies used to be just about pure business but now there is a much larger ethical and political aspect tied into every company — even if it is a tech company whose product is not directly involved with politics in any way.
eradicate slave labor
Slavery exists in its most explicit form in our contemporary world. How is this not talked about more?
our choices are not really our own
Have our choices really ever been our own? Even before the age of advertising and PR?
We're identified by the brand that we drink, by the coffee houses we frequent, and by the process by which the beans are grown and harvested.
It's quite interesting how much we like to construct our identity based on products we buy. Who would we be without the things that we HAVE?
a status symbol.
This is definitely true. Starbucks is a huge status/cultural symbol. It is even satirically used as an important feature to be included in the "basic white girl" look. This points to the close connection between coffee and culture.
We have standardized labor production so that we don't necessarily work when it's best for us
What was work like before this "labor production"? Were small-scale farmers able to work at hours that made the most sense to them? I don't think so
they weren't seen as mass producers, they were viewed as having a closer relationship to the coffees they were trying to sell,
What was the public's attitude towards mass producers at the time? Do we consumers prefer that the seller/producer has a close relationship with the product they're selling?
The vision was a type of coffee to appeal to every person, including flavored coffees for the "soft drink generation.
So the target group of the PR was becoming more focused and less general? This is interesting. I think we continue to see the same trend today
We are entering the 'me' generation.
This reminds me of something I'v read about recently that commented on the link between individualization/atomization and globalization. It is certainly undeniable that individualism is a characteristic of the modern age
second postwar development involved the long-term decline in consumption beginning in the 1960s
Is there a link between the war and the decline in coffee consumption?