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. Typical of the "resource curse" common to oil and gold-producing countries in the Global South, many coffee-producing countries are among the poorest. Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee, is one of the world's oldest civilizations. Its quality Sidamo beans can fetch up to $25/lb. at Starbucks. Yet, Ethiopia's 1.2 million smallholder coffee farmers earn less than $2/day and the country's per-capita GDP is $130—one-fifth the Sub-Saharan Africa average.
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