Another World（8）
Teachers and fellow schoolmates, We hope all of you are well. With this familiar melody, the sound of our campus radio station begins now.
Welcome to Another World, another wonder.
Today,i would like to share with you a commercial theme--the coffee industry.
The market for the world's most popular drink has come a long way since the days of instant coffee, when we just added boiling water to some brown powder.After that came the giants like Starbucks and Coats Coffee who made coffee drinking trendy and a lifestyle statement. People are far more aware of what they're drinking these days.But I don't think we should forget what lies behind the coffee we enjoy every day. It's a hugely complicated business.
Coffee is the second biggest commodity in the world .More than 400 billion cups of coffee are drunk worldwide each year.
That means the price of coffee is changing every day, every hour even, as traders speculate about the price.
It means farmers in countries like Ethiopia, Costa Rica and Brazil are dependent on the deals that are made in commodity markets thousands of miles from their farms. It makes them extremely vulnerable.What happens in the coffee markets makes waves around the globe. Entire national economies depend on the price of coffee. It's the key to whether individual farmers can provide for their families, face unemployment and ultimately whether whole communities stay on the land or trek to the cities.
The price of coffee has soared-that means gone up quickly in recent years. Surely that's good for everyone involved in the business.I believe the profit margins for coffee are among the highest in the world. I can't see what all the fuss is about.But the high price doesn't mean that everyone benefits. It all depends on how the profits are distributed.
As I know there are countless transactions between the grower and the drinker.
A grower can have a really good crop, but the amount he makes stays the same-or can even fall.Most of the profits go to the commodity traders and very little to the individual growers of the bean. It sounds like the growers have no control. That's what happens in other agricultural sectors.
But of course, some people are trying to distribute the profits more widely and they have been having some success.
I heard about some small-scale projects where the company takes charge of the whole process from field to shop.
Yes These organizations tend to farm organically. This is very labour intensive-that means a lot of people are employed-and it creates a lot of jobs for people within the local community. In this way they are not victims of market fluctuations. For plantation, the approach they have is to go through every step of the way-every step of the process-so that they grow it, they pick it, and they process it in the mill. Then eventually they'll roast it, package it and sell it as the small plantation they are. And that would allow them to stay or be profitable at the end of the day.
So it's good to know that small growers can live reasonably comfortably despite what the world markets are doing.
Maybe the next time you grab a takeaway coffee I'll try to remember all the politics involved in the production process.
Would you look at that, once again, time has flown.Thanks for listening, my friends. Have a pleasant week.
Another World, another wonder. See you next Wednesday. Bye！
節(jié)目制作：雷佳歡、李庚桐、李翰麒
編輯：夏志道
