Coffee has long stood for both privilege and poverty. Since the time of the colonial coffee booms of the mid 1800s, coffee has been one of the world’s most valuable export commodities, and today is second only to oil in gross value of world trade. Worldwide, 25 million people earn their livelihoods from coffee farming, supplying an estimated 500 billion cups of coffee to consumers each year (Public Broadcasting System 2003). However, wealth generated from the coffee trade is not equitably distributed: the price paid for a cup of coffee in the U.S. exceeds half the daily income of many small-scale coffee farmers. Workers on large coffee plantations often earn less than $2.00/day.

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