Some readers may remember when a full pound of coffee – not the ludicrous 12 or 13 ounces we get today – sold for 69 cents. You may also remember the stories that reached our ears, supposedly from the mountains of South and Central America, concerning protracted freezes and droughts and various other maladies that befell the poor coffee growers.

Well maybe they did and maybe they didn’t.

Fact is, coffee prices shot to over $5 per pound before settling to somewhere near where they are today, and that was before anyone heard of “gourmet coffee.”

Much the same thing happened in the beef industry in the 1960s. Beef prices rose so fast that many households found it necessary to develop a taste for horse meat.

Today, even lovers of chocolate are not immune. The groundwork for a future rapid increase in chocolate prices is being laid as I write. Raymond Schnell, a geneticist who presented his research on cocoa in two conferences in the United States in the week before Valentine’s Day, believes it is only a matter of time before diseases like witches’ broom and black pot rot endanger the global cocoa supply.

Bill Guyton, president of Virginia-based World Cocoa Foundation, recently stated that overall production for 2004 is expected to fall 0.3 percent, lead in part by a decline of 2.4 percent in West Africa.

Do you see where this is leading?

When skullduggery, manipulation and globalization are used to bring market forces to bear on a commodity, prices shoot up faster than dandelions in August. Is this the American way?

As this nation’s economic situation again becomes threatening, as select prices begin to get out of hand, as coffee farmers starve or switch to more profitable crops and as beef prices again soar, we may do well to recall past experiences.

As an aid to our joint effort at remembering, I would like to bring you two not-so-far-fetched tales of the American Way.

The death of Juan Valdez

On the day he was to die, Juan lifted his eyes to the mountains, which surrounded his village in a soothing, protective embrace. Their steep, angular sides draped in a robe of soft green splattered here and there with thin, gray-white clouds.

For how many years had he and his burro climbed and wandered in that beautiful green? How many times had he laughed, cried, slept, bled and broken bread there? How many bent and sweat-filled hours had he spent in travail beneath those moist gray-white clouds, beneath the unblinking eyes of God?

Now the green, the life-giving green, was turning against him. The small red beans he picked day after day grew scarce as if in hiding. The men at the market paid him less and then still less for what he managed to pick, but they demanded more and then still more bags per day.

But Juan considered himself fortunate, fortunate to collect his $2 per day for the beans he picked. But in the market he heard of others less fortunate.

As world market prices dropped as low as 45 cents per pound, Latin American farmers were devastated, receiving as little as 15 cents to 25 cents per pound for their coffee on local markets; in Kenya and Guatemala, entire crops were left to rot on coffee bushes; in El Salvador 30,000 farm jobs were lost; in Nicaragua unemployed farm workers desperate for jobs set up shantytowns in cities; and in Mexico families were torn apart as members risked their lives at the border to find work in the United States.

Then the cold came. The damp in the thin, white clouds turned to ice. The soft green became a harsh brown. The red beans fell upon the ground or rotted upon the branch.

Still Juan worked. With numb and bleeding fingers, he worked. His weary burro fell on the ice and slid over a cliff. In a magnificently quiet instant, Juan found himself alone. With no burro to carry his bags down the mountain to market, Juan knew he was defeated.

At the market, they told him machines were coming – machines with no blood, machines with no burros, machines with no families. Machines would pick amidst the beautiful green, beneath the thin wet clouds, beneath the unblinking eyes of God.

They told him he was to die, must die. They told him there was no room on the mountain for his kind. There, at the market in the valley, they killed him.

They then went to the media and loudly complained. They complained about the harsh way fate was dealing with them. They complained about the cold, the ice and the rotting beans. They told everyone that they were sorry the price for a pound of the beans had risen from 69 cents to over $5, but it was not in their control. They rung their hands, wept and prayed for all to see.

What the killers-of-Juan did not say was although they were paying farmers roughly 24 cents per pound, they (four giants – Procter & Gamble Co., Philip Morris Cos.’s Kraft Foods Inc., Sara Lee Corp. and Nestle SA of Switzerland – control about 40 percent of the world’s coffee) were selling those beans for an average of $3.60 a pound.

The bean-drinkers of the world grew very sad. They could not, would not, pay $5. The sad bean-drinkers became desperate. They began drinking tea leaves and roasted cereal.

Relief soon came to the sad bean-drinkers. They-who-killed-Juan invented new roasting techniques, which, they said, transformed 13 ounces of beans into the coffee making equivalent of a full pound. The bean-drinkers would buy less and get as much, they said. Full 13-ounce bags and cans of the special roast were put on sale for only $3.50 each.

The international charity Oxfam said that coffee-reliant economies in Latin America and Africa are on the brink of collapse, due to low prices, and now farmers are supplementing them by growing drugs.

But the sad bean-drinkers are now happy. They-who-killed-Juan are very happy.

Juan was soon forgotten. The burro’s body was never found. Juan’s children starved.

A cowboy’s lament

In the heat of the Texas sun, the cowboys drove the cattle. Over hills, across rivers, through Bad Lands where only rocks grow, they drove them. Through dust and rain, they drove them. The fat, four-legged beef factories grew thinner as the going got tougher. The cowboys wept to see their profits wasting on the hoof. The beef would be lean and tough. The price per pound would fall.

At the railhead, they-who-killed-Juan looked over the thin cattle, shook their heads and offered to buy them anyway, but at a much-reduced price. The cowboys took what was offered then, defeated and downcast, rode off and ate their beans in silence.

The Juan-killers fed the cattle rich corn feed, antibiotics and chemicals. The cattle fattened, grew content and ambled through the chute to their demise. The killers-of-Juan grew rich, but not rich enough. The good, nutritious corn, the antibiotics and the chemicals had cost them much. There must be a better way.

Again, the killers went to the media. Again, they told terrible stories: of drought on the plains, of foreign diseases, of dying cattle. They cried, wrung their hands and prayed. The price of beef was raised.

At Lunardi’s market in San Jose’s Evergreen neighborhood, prices on all cuts of beef went up. Some customers gave up steaks for hamburger and ribs. Regular ground beef shot from $1.89 a pound to $2.59 a pound. Filet mignon rose from $14.99 a pound to $22.95 a pound.

But retailers had little choice. Cattle prices reached a record $1.20 per 100 pounds of live weight, about 50 percent more than in October. The wholesale price of beef in September was $2.43 a pound, compared with $1.75 the previous year.

Still the price of beef increased. It doubled, rose threefold then fourfold. Beef eaters began looking elsewhere for meat. The beef eaters ate the cowboy’s horses.

The killers then made their move. A better way was at hand. They would make “fat” a bad word, something to be avoided?

Scientific studies commenced. Animal fat was found full of cholesterol – a leading cause of heart disease.

They-who-killed-Juan lobbied Washington until round men in vests passed new laws to protect the sad beef eaters of America from the dangerous fat. Henceforth and forever, prime beef – that tender, juicy steak marbled with white fat – would be a thing of the unenlightened past.

Choice beef – a lesser grade containing far less of the dreaded fat – would be moved into the spot formerly held by prime. Fine restaurants would serve the new lean, dry, healthy, prime grade. Common beef eaters would buy a still leaner, dryer, more healthy, less tasteful, choice grade (formerly classified as fit for canning only) in their supermarkets.

They-who-killed-Juan lowered beef prices slightly. The beef eaters sighed their thanks, bellied up to butcher blocks and ordered their steaks and roasts at three times the price they had been a year ago, but less than they were a month ago. New Age dieters, following the teachings of a deceased guru, further increased the demand for beef, which is very low in carbohydrates.

They-who-killed-Juan charged more for less. They were very happy. The cowboys tore their shirts, burned their chaps and sent up a terrible wail for their digested horses. The killers, hearing the cowboy’s cry, quickly sold them pickup trucks, blue jeans, baseball caps, Reeboks and Budweiser.

The cowboys stopped their lament, placed a large, dry, tasteless steak on the campfire and opened their beers.

“It just doesn’t get any better than this,” said Slim.

Out on the plains, in the grasslands and lush valleys, all was quiet. No cattle were being fattened or driven to market.

Guy Bourrie is a regular Sun Journal columnist. He lives in Washington, Maine, and can be reached at redhaven@pivot.net.

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