Coffee and Diversitea

I attended the Smith-Steeb non-IA event, Coffee and Diversitea, on January 30th. The program offered coffee and teas samples while exploring information about the top coffee and tea producing countries around the world. Powerpoints and a Kahoot trivia quiz were used to learn about ethically produced products. A large focus was the the difference between race and ethnicity, race being the physical attributes of a person and ethnicity being the cultural connections of a person. They also explained the differences between colonization as the practice and settlement of people and imperialization as the driving control over another country through political and economic means. The event then continued to showe some of the negative effects of colonization on the produced exports within each country.

Another large focus was the presentation was on the importance of buying fair trade items for better trading conditions between developing countries so that there are fair prices paid to the producer. Each of the tested products were fair trade products from each of the countries. We were testing six different fair trade types of teas and coffees. Each drink was drastically different, ranging from bitter, dark, medium roast blends for the coffees and delightful aromas and colors for the teas. My favorite drink was the jasmine green tea, that was packed as pearl beads that opened up like flowers as they steeped in the hot water.

As well, we learned about the history and geography associated with each coffee and tea producing countries. China is where tea originated, and it was specific to the region making hard to grow in other regions like England. The Chinese artichoke tea smelled sweet with a nice light orange color infused. In Vietnam the people use a traditional coffee dipper and metal strainer to brew their drinks. In the Colombian presentation I recognized some of the information from my Spanish language class that focused on the culture within Colombia but continued more in depth into the coffee producing parts of the country. I learned about Cumbia, a traditional music from Columbia, Gabriel García Márquez, a famous author, and J Balvin a popular reggaeton pop music artist. Colombia was a colonized country and this affected their large focus of exports within the country. The Colombian coffee was made from dark roast beans are rich without the bitter taste. In Ethiopia, the top export is coffee and is the location of where coffee originated. Ethiopian coffee is produced by small farmers and half of produced coffee is for consumption within the country and the other half exported. Ethiopia was never colonized, there were attempts by Italy, but the country maintained independent. In Kenya the top export is tea and is ranked third in production after China and India.

This event was an enjoyable and an interesting focus on the international connections between culture and industrial production of drink production that is exported and consumed from different places around the world. This event expanded my views on the distribution of my coffee and tea products to help emphasize buying ethically produced products to support international family farmers.