Part One Blog Post: Do our purchases help?

Are we or aren't we helping with our purchases?

According to Harvard, the average American drinks 27.9 oz. of coffee a day, adding up to a 40 billion dollars that the Unites States spends on coffee each year. Most major corporations that sell coffee purchase the beans from poor farmers in foreign counties. As detailed in Where Am I Eating, a book by Kelsey Timmerman, Starbucks and several other large companies obtain at least a portion of their coffee beans from farmers in Columbia. These farmers are underpaid and some would say they are being taken advantage of. These farmers have no knowledge of what the corporations they sell to are or of the value the fruits of their labor hold. When Americans learn of these bad business practices, they tend to boycott and avoid buying from these companies in an attempt to create change and help these workers. So, does boycotting create enough of a stir to help the farmers or do our purchases help more?

Well, yes, our purchases do help the farmers. The more business the companies get and the more bags of coffee beans the company buys, the more money the farmers get. On the other side, your purchase does help the companies more than the farmers. Companies like Starbucks make a much better profit off each bag of coffee sold than farmers do. According to Where Am I Eating, farmers get a bit less than a dollar for every bag of coffee sold. That money may not seem like a lot, but that is enough for those farmers to live off of. If you buy less bags of beans, the farmers get even less money, which is when these workers actually start to struggle. Even if that wasn't a problem, history shows that these major corporations don't tend to change just because of boycotting. They make enough money that even when you boycott, they are not forced to make changes in order to bring your business back. 

Even if a loss in business was enough to make them change their practices, it would most likely take a good portion of time before they decided to give in to the boycotting. Throughout the time protesting and boycotting occurred, farmers would make less money because of the drop in sales. This could make the farmers lives more difficult than they already were. So, no, withholding your business is probably not the best method of protesting and creating change. All in all, your purchases do help and boycotting does hurt. The farmers rely on your business for their source of income, even if they don't know it. Each purchase you make gives that farmer more money as more of their beans are sold. While boycotting may seem beneficial, it has several downfalls that make it a dangerous practice which could harm the farmers more than it helps them. If America really wanted to look out for the livelihoods of those farmers, the most beneficial route would be to continue buying coffee, because every purchase really does help.