During the pandemic I’ve hopped around between different creative pursuits cause I’m a noncommittal dweeb. One thing I tried my hand at was making youtube videos, and while researching coffee production I was surprised by just how fucked it really is. Everyone knows that coffee is produced with slavery, but the global economy’s relationship with coffee is terrifying. People are not addicted to coffee, society is. In fact, coffee shops are the fastest growing part of the restaurant business. The West is so addicted to coffee that it is the second most in-demand commodity behind only crude oil. It is also (disputed) the second most popular drink in the world behind water, though this fluctuates with soft drinks and tea. We produce so much fucking coffee. Here are some numbers. All data is from 2020.
3 key figures: 1 coffee bean is ~.1325g, 1 cup of coffee is 10g of beans, 1 bag of coffee (unit of measure for international production) is 60kg.
Consumption: In 2020 the world produced 168.5 million bags of coffee, weighing 10,110,000 metric tons of fresh beans. That’s the same as:
MASS
- Blue Whales: Average mass is 110 metric tons= 91,909 Blue Whales (Second level of abstraction that’s not as helpful as it is funny: Average whale length is 27m x 91,909 = 2,481.5km Burj Khalifa is .8298km at the tip x 91,909 = 2,990.5 Burj Khalifa’s American football field: .9144km x 91,909 = 2,713.8 football fields)
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Heaviest recorded Elephant: Mass of 1.22 tons 8,286,885.25 Fat Fucking Elephants
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Nimitz class aircraft carrier: Mass of 100,000 tons 101.1 Aircraft carriers
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Great Pyramid of Giza: Estimated 5.3 million metric tons 1.91 Great Pyramids
VOLUME
- Coffee Beans: Density of beans: 561kg/m^3 10,110,000,000kg/(561kg/m3)=18,021,390.37m3=18,021.39km^3 of beans produced in 2020
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Great Pyramid 18,021.39km3/2,583.283km3=~7 Great Pyramids
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Lake Tanganyika (3rd largest lake on earth by volume) 18,900 km3/18,021.39km^3=about the same.
What horrifies me is the shear number of beans that slaves had to pick by hand. 60kg per bag/.1325g (mass of 1 bean) x 168.5 mil bags = 76,301,886,792,452.83 beans
Thank you NeverGoOutside for pointing out that I used the total population of the US and EU. I did the math again using the 15-64 demographics because they’re the biggest coffee drinkers and it’s a pain in the ass to factor in the elderly. Here’s the revised population data:
EU:
Coffee drinking population (15-64): 286.62 million
Imported bags: 49 million
49,000,000*6000=294,000,000,000 cups
294,000,000,000 cups/ 286,620,000 drinkers= 1025.75 per year or 2.8 cups per day
USA:
Coffee drinking population (15-64): 218.8 million
Imported bags: 26 million
26,000,000*6000=156,000,000,000/218.8 million = 713 (rounded from 712.98) cups per year or 2 cups per day (rounded from 1.95)
In short, I’m sick of doing math, stop buying coffee. I’m probably gonna do chocolate next week.
I hope I didn’t fuck up the formatting of this post. Edit: I fucked up the formatting
I switched to Kombucha, granted it was the palpitations from my coffee addiction that caused me to switch. Once you get used to the Kombucha taste, its so much better, gives me a ton of energy and a minimal crash. Its also grab and go instead of having to make a whole pot. I still enjoy a cup from time to time but Im glad that im not contributing to this industry anymore.
