• “Capitalism’s Favorite Drug” — review by Michael Pollan in the Atlantic

Prologue

• Él Salvador → long history of subsistence agriculture until late 1890s, when it started being converted completely focused on monoculture of coffee
  • Shift from striking equality to extreme poverty & a super-rich elite (14 families, including European-educated oligarchy)
• Shift to 90% exports being coffee, mainly to American supermarkets... change driven by James Hill
• 1970s— violence from shadow hit squads, interference of US vs communism, political instability
• Santa Ana = second biggest city in Él Salvador, next to Santa Ana volcano, where all the coffee plantations were
  • Coffee mills in the town
  • James Hill = “King of Coffee,” had 18 plantations feeding his milk, Las Tres Puertas (??)
• Coffee business = incredibly volatile
  • Plants required lots of tending and several years before harvest
  • Value of harvest dependent on whims of international market
• History of coffee embedded in story of globalization
  • Increase in connections paralleled by division
  • Coffee = just as crucial to global inequality as it is to global capitalism
  • Raises the question: what does it mean to be connected to far away people and places through everyday things?

Chapter 1: The Perfect Symbol of Islam

• Native to Ethiopia, initially cultivated in Yemen (1500s)
• Coffeehouses = indicative of civility to Ottomans
• Associated strongly with Turks and Islam in Europe
  • Initially viewed with suspicion
  • Spread mainly by coffeehouse, first to London in mid 1600s
  • Disagreement over what exactly the effect was
• Rise of coffee in London = concurrent with Tudors, Cromwell → associated with more free speech/discussion
  • Became very popular within a century of being introduced, but trade completely monopolized by Yemen
  • Vs tea— introduced after coffee, controlled initially by Dutch from Java, but flooded English markets after British got access to Chinese ports → became the go-to drink of Industrial Rev, Boston Tea Party (and Dutch shifted to coffee)
  • Coffee’s effect compared to alcohol— but not as harmful; confusing in how to fit into “four humors” model of medicine

Chapter 2: Cottonopolis

• Manchester, after the IR — tons of pollution, acid rain, loud noises, gloom
  • Cotton products known simply as “Manchester”
  • Responsible for almost 1/2 of British wealth, which was a substantial of a large portion of the global economy...
  • Powered by surge in hard labor unlike any in history
  • Where James Hill was born
• Hill learned Spanish— essential skill for business at the time, eventually moved to London, then Central America

Chapter 3: A State of Constant Eruption

• Large scale commercial migration from US, UK to Latin America in 1820s after independence movements
• Izalco = active volcano in Él Salvador, spewing flames and smoke, almost a “lighthouse” from the sea
  • Hard for Europeans to even fathom that volcanos like this exist; described as a “natural steam engine”
  • Izalco arose at similar time as IR, ironically
  • Central America overall very seisomgicaoly active: earthquakes, volcanic eruptions... → fertile and verdant soil
• When James Hill arrived, coffee was most important export from the region
• Coffee got its arabica name bc Yemen, etc. dominated coffee production during 16th-17th c when Europeans were giving plants Latin names
  • Europeans tried & failed to establish coffee in their usual places (Sri Lanka, etc)
  • Finally Dutch succeeded in Java, surpassing Yemeni production; then to Suriname
  • In 18th c, plants smuggled out of controlled areas and coffee spread widely across Americas— Brazil, Cuba, eventually Haiti
  • Brazil (directed by Lisbon) had huge surge in production from 1790s to 1830s, burning forests to make room for plantations, overtaking Java
• Initially spread by empires and colonialism, but flourished by liberalism
  • Latin American liberalism = classic ideals + free market capitalism, lead to 1820s independence movements
  • In Él Salvador, elites unsure how to support nationhood → sought profitable crops, turned to coffee
• Salvadoran govt backed coffee in 1860s— subsidies, military exemptions, etc. to help it overtake much easier-to-grow indigo crops
  • Conflict over land use in Western volcanic highlands with Indians, who grew corn, beans and relied on agriculture for survival → became a racial conflict with liberal elites (“European descent”) saying the Indians were backwards, hindering economy
  • Resulted in communal lands of Indians, peasants being turned into market commodities; people forced to move or work on plantations under harsh conditions
  • Resistance by the dispossessed, but ultimately overcome by the wealthy elites w their military backing
  • Land privatization, policing of work forces, etc = “liberal” policies for those with money
  • Need for more bosses to come— migrants from Europe, America

Chapter 4: Eel

• 2 events in 1880s made coffee even more successful in Él Salvador
  • Abolition of slavery in Brazil, which was the major coffee producer in the area; entire economy depended on slavery
  • Rust fungus spreading across Asia → production plummeted (by half in Java!)
• James Hill’s last name pronounced in Spanish sounded like “eel,” reputation for being slippery in business...

Chapter 5: The Hills Brothers

• Rockland, Maine → one of world’s biggest limestone mines (lye producer— brick, fertilizer)
• Augustus Hill (1860s) moved from there to CA → with sons, the Hill brothers, a started coffee & spice mill company
• Coffee shaped America’s history with wider world, even before independence
  • After revolution, without British trade restrictions, established coffee trade with French & colonies
  • Coffee drinking, coffee house culture became very popular, esp in N cities, but mainly among elites bc $
• Dynamics of coffee in US shaped by slavery and imperialism
  • Slavery: cut ties w Haiti after their revolution, so more business with Brazil (including slave trade), which produced a lot of coffee as a result of intense slave labor
  • Imperial aspirations: interests in Latin America → duty free coffee trade; huge increase in imports
• Democratization of coffee to the masses throughout 19th c, popular among soldiers in Civil War
  • Sold under names like Java and Mocha to dissociate from slave trade; both available widely but rarely from the actual place
  • Ground coffee usually contained lots of cheaper fillers like chicory, grains → eventually people liked whole beans more
  • “Mocha” could be any peaberry coffee beans (one round bean vs two halves)— farmers encouraged formation by stunting vertical formation of trees
  • “Java” = any large beans
• People dealing in flour (from American, esp CA) corn → got into coffee trade, bc often selling to Europeans who grew coffee in Latin America

Chapter 6: The Sign of Apollo

• Hill and his wife had a son, James ( the Sp pronunciation!)
  • “James” also often translated to “Santiago”: St. Iago → Jacob → James
• Biggest challenge for new owners of coffee plantations = labor
  • Both a shortage of labor and difficulty in motivating workers to do what was needed
  • Usually relied on Indians who no longer had land due to their ethnicity, so couldn’t feed themselves
  • Double-bind, though— just as workers depended on planters, they depended on the workers to actually... grow the coffee
  • Very stereotypical idea of the moso as laborer: in need of a master, started judging then by physiological traits & measurements
• Coffee plants grown under shade to preserve moisture, pruned to stay short enough that beans could be harvested
• James Hill (the son) started coffee mill as he got his plantations up and running— Las Tres Puertas
  • Symbol = triskelion; a hexagon with three sides swung in (like three doors); associated with Apollo, Alexander the Great, scientific innovation and thermodynamics

Chapter 7: A God on the Make

• Coffee took off on Java with cultivation system for labor management — coercion of Javanese people to plant a certain number of coffee plants
  • Quality was questionable, but large quantities and profits from coffee
• Early 19th c, study of Javanese people’s physiology by Dutch doctor Robin Meyers → eventually tied together the forces governing the human body, electricity, the natural world, etc as energy
  • Similar topic studied by Joule in work to build more efficient machines → discovered conversion of forms of energy
  • Eventually summed up in conservation → first law of thermodynamics!
  • Energy became fundamental way to study nature
• Idea captured Victorian age — “You cannot get something from nothing”
  • Energy → work, and all energy came from sun; people tracked it through crops to money; “All the work done under the sun is actually done by it”
  • Victorians → “sun worshippers,” productivism, view of the world as a giant machine ready to create things
  • Made thermodynamics into blueprint for production and $
• New associations with sun expanded “gospel of Apollo” to include all of enterprise

Chapter 8: The Mill

• Milling coffee, like milling cotton, creates value through transformation of raw material— but by taking apart rather than weaving together
• How to get a coffee bean from a coffee cherry? Two methods...
  • Dry mills = easier and cheaper— just let them dry out in the sun
  • Wet mills = more consistent coffee, but difficult & $ to operate, requires lots of water— strips the wet fruit from bean
    • Fresh harvest of cherries dumped into water, where ripe ones sank and other floated → fed to depulper where they were all mashed up until coated in pulpy honey over parchment → fermentation tanks, where honey eventually fell off, beans split, just covered in parchment → pushed in canals to drying patios (stretched for acres!); continuously tilled to exposure seeds to air → moved to hulling machines to remove parchment → sent to cleaners (women)
• Women disproportionately employed as final inspectors of products across history
  • Hired for this role bc job was incredibly minute and fast; needed tons of labor and women’s wages was cheaper
  • Inspection perhaps the most important stage of process, bc cleanliness was biggest marker of quality → this “weight” was placed on women bc patriarchal roles
  • First planter to harvest would tell all his men workers to tell women to come work as cleaners: first to do so would ultimately have the cleanest and thus highest quality coffee
• Coffee graded by inspectors from NY Coffee Exchange based on trash (twigs, dirt) and defects in beans → standardization of quality
  • Standardization allowed for liquidity of market, futures market → protected importers vs surpluses and such; had nothing to do with the taste or drinker
  • Why did NY get to set the standards?
• America = biggest coffee consumer in the world... why?
  • Immigration trends in late 19th c → people with coffee-drinking culture
  • AND proximity & connection to Latin America, coffee production center of the workd
  • Coffee → beverage for the masses, even for the poorest of the poor
  • Prices stable for awhile, very low

Chapter 9: Bad Luck

• 1895: first crop year at Las Tres Puertas...
• Crash in coffee prices as production costs plummeted
  • Influx in labor to Brazil for first time since emancipation
• Size of American coffee market threatened
  • 1898 = Spanish American War → shifting world order, with US acquiring Spanish colonies (Philippines, PR, etc) that had strong coffee production under imperial rule (also dependent on coffee exports)
  • Anti-colonial solidarity btw US and Latin America weakening as US took imperial role...
  • Would US continue to import coffee from Latin America duty-free, or rely more on preferential/imperial trade with new colonies?
  • New colonies pushing for help from US, bc prices of coffee in free US markets much lower than Spanish ones (esp relevant to Puerto Rico)
  • US left coffee producers in new colonies to fend for themselves— coffee remained duty-free, became first mass-consumer product to be outsourced

Chapter 10: The Taster

• Coffee bean = 12% fat, makes flavor very volatile
• 1900: Hills brothers in SF → vacuum-sealed cans → could last much longer, preserved freshness
  • Until then, coffee judged only by appearances (standard = size, shape of bean), even though everyone knew that had nothing to do with the taste... but “handsomeness” = most convenient
  • By appearance, Brazilian beans = best, but known to have bad flavor, so rarely labelled as such; lots of incentive to manipulate beans to look like the premium Java and Mocha types
  • Began grading coffee on other qualities, since could no longer see the beans, by cupping
• Cupping → visual inspection of green beans, roasted beans, then actual brewing (like what we did!)
  • Gave more influence to roasters, expanding range of beans they could sell (ex. Central American beans that were smaller, less visually appealing)
  • No longer described coffee on a standard scale of grading, but with adjectives based on flavor
  • Rise in value of “mild” coffees (not Brazilian, now used more as a filler) for their diversity in flavor (from diverse growing areas), sweetness
• Hill used a mixture of wet and dry fermentation in his mills, adopted from Costa Rica, which gave the beans a richer flavor
  • His practice of listening to buyers re: taste was rare, trying to improve and learn → rated as one of best coffee producers
  • Positioned himself very well in low-priced market, so in good place when Brazil began to hold back supply to jack up prices
• Sweetness of coffee derived from specific conditions during cultivation, harvesting, milling... but even as these conditions grew in value, they were hidden in blends of new vacuum-packed cans

Chapter 11: Special Work

• WWI times: Federico Hill, James’s son, came to SF to finish his education
  • Started at boarding school started by David Starr Jordan of Stanford (and Why Fish Don’t Exist!) to funnel boys to the school
• SF = biggest market for Central American coffee export, but under threat from Germany → exporters merchants started paying coffee producers to ship coffee!
• Hill started growing bourbon coffee — higher yield and hardier than typica, but not considered to have good taste in SF markets
  • Originally valued bc appearance similar to mocha (small, rounder) but small size = less of an advantage for cupping (more beans per cup)
  • Increase in yield > decrease in value, but others worried it would give all Salvadoran coffee a bad reputation
  • Started being grown on previously unproductive lands → most widely grown cultivar in the area
  • How to increase size of bean? Opposite problem from most stone fruits (usually want to decrease pit size)...
• James Hill (son, studying in SF) figured only way was to increase nutrients of soil → ultimately a labor problem, as was all of agriculture
  • Role of human labor in agriculture glossed over in CA, despite its essential role in factory farming
  • Accepted “theory” = pitting groups of migrant workers against each other

Chapter 12: The History of Holes

• Sweetness (and thus value) of coffee dependent on ability of planter to harvest at peak ripeness, process & milk well → dependent on strong and diligent labor → favored big/rich farms
• Hill motivated employees to work with rations (food) rather than money → laborers very dependent on employer to feed themselves, money had limited value to actually buy food
• Hill = one of first to offer work by the day, and to women (other than as cleaners)
• Manipulated families to get the most/best labor possible, though avoided child labor most time

Chapter 13: The Glass Cage

• Development of calorie by Atkins, Atwater motivated by trying to maximize labor
• View of the body (and many people) as a machine, an energy converter... → these natural laws should also govern society → productivism
  • Producing is the ultimate moral goal, work is the human purpose

Chapter 14: The Hunger Plantation

• Capitalism runs on privatization of land → people dependent on work to be able to buy food; hunger drives labor
  • Plantation owners enlisted their managers to enforce this, keep workers from eating any fruit in the farm, harsh and violent punishment, withholding food
  • Created culture of violence and brutality in El Salvador coffee scene
  • 1920s: Hill known as more “delicate” than other plantation owners → wanted his farms to be “good” places to work at
• Hill’s method of work discipline less directly violent, but similarly exploitative
  • Still used hunger to drive labor and ultimately coffee
  • Known as having the best shade trees — used a variety of bean trees instead of fruit trees, both bc good for nitrogen-fixing, leaves & beans good compost for filling coffee tree holes, and bc many were inedible to humans
• Coffee monoculture flattened diverse diet of Él Salvador to just tortillas and beans
• Hill set up kitchens so he could measure exactly how much food & energy was going into the system, and could compare to output of labor, to make sure nothing was stolen

Chapter 15: Love in the Time of Coffee

• Also kept track of how much workers were sweating, talking, etc. to monitor how hard they were working
• Labor by day sometimes had more subtle outcomes, harder to measure output
• Overall was very obsessive about controlling his wirkers

Chapter 16: The Truth About Coffee

• Why/how does coffee increase the capacity for work?
  • Mechanism of caffeine unknown for awhile — not acting by calories, the new currency of that time
• Publicity organizations in US → got employers to serve coffee & factor it in to their “optimization of labor”
  • Enlisted MIT to do studies on caffeine to show it improving cognitive performance and motor skills

Chapter 17: The American Cure

• US → controlled loans to Latin American countries (came with economic oversight, military threat if defaulted on load payments) to ensure positive relations
  • = “American cure” by Kemmerer to “sick” Latin American countries— smart injection of money with government support
  • All very analogous good a calorimeter: energy/money in, productivity out
• 1870s, formulation of units of energy and laws of thermodynamics → economics shifted from moral/social science to exact science
  • Utility in economics = energy of physics
  • Foundations of neoclassical economics— no need for means of production, bc to be alive is to work is to produce
• Salvadoran govt prioritized export crops (coffee, then alternatives in case that collapsed)
  • American “overseer” Taylor turned rural areas into experiment for lots of potential tropical export crops
  • Cotton especially took off, and with coffee, reduced food production even more → prices soared, anti-American sentiment
• 1920s: American influence in Él Salvador and other Latin American countries = loans, economic reforms, economic, political, military— training of National Guard..
  • Questions arising: is US influence actually helping these countries? Was it hurting the place of America in the world (material goods > justice)? It was the US becoming imperialistic?

Chapter 18: The Coffee Question

• Early 1900s, Brazilian Coffee Defense → “valorization”: bought up and held supply to increase prices
  • Accused of being a monopoly by US → trust-busting??
  • Also drove up prices of Central American coffee, which was more known as higher quality (not as big of a problem) → even more
• Herbert Hoover (despite reputation after Great Depression) = big advocate for combatting hunger, like Allied blockade of Germany during WWI
  • At request of US coffee roasters, again looked into supporting domestic coffee production (in new territories, occupied land — PR, Hawaii, Philippines)
  • Companies selling cheap coffee sold Brazilian → didn’t want the prices high, but places specializing in premium coffee were okay with it
  • Looking on a global scale, coffee actually still very underpriced — terrible working conditions on plantations...
  • US govt (now prez candidate Hoover) no longer looking to stop Defense Fund, bc realized it would most hurt Central American producers
• The coffee question: what was the right price for coffee, that would allow laborers in Latin America to buy American goods?

Chapter 19: The Paradise of Eating

• 1930s — some of Salvadoran left → communism, Bolshevik influence all advocating for better working conditions
  • Planning for Leninist revolution, nationalization of land and banks
  • Growth of labor groups → protested attempts to ban rallies and such
  • Él Salvador in debt and had no way to get out of it bc export taxes on coffee, but basically everyone against US loan (left didn’t want to be controlled, coffee planters didn’t want to pay for it)
• Some possibility of reform with 1931 election, but then US bank influence on govt → maintaining peace/order will maintain ability of plantation owners to produce cheap coffee (through poor working conditions) → loan will be paid back
  • Reform and protest suppressed again, sometimes w military force → left pushed more behind politics
  • Communal ethic of plantations (people united by hunger for survival) aligned with communist thought

Chapter 20: Inside the Red Circle

• President overthrown → US cut ties with Él Salvador → new prez tried to ally with plantation owners, first widespread strikes by workers, National Guard called in... violence and communist revolution attempts
• Marxism → surplus value of products comes from laborer but pocketed by capitalist
  • How can new concept of energy, thermodynamics play into quantifying this? “Human as steam engine” was uncomfortable thought
  • Progress in capitalism = “progress in sweating”
  • Salvadoran left asked Moscow for help/$
• Planned communist revolt, Jan 1932
  • British and US brought in naval forces to try to intimidate, stop uprising (“British lives and property” in danger)

Chapter 21: An Exceedingly Good Lunch

• Revolution ran through coffee economy
  • Coincided with volcanic eruptions, slowing arrival of naval forces
• Uprising of laborers violently squelched by Salvadoran government at urging of British and US
  • Many slaughtered
  • Seemed more like the workers (mostly Indians) fighting against slave-like work conditions than Bolshevik revolution
  • Organizers of rebellion executed

Chapter 22: The Slaughter

• Insurgency subdued but not completely dead... near genocidal response, massacring anyone who looks like an Indian
• Eventually, govt and military gained approval from US (though not recognition) → allied with planters to solve economic problems... by growing more coffee, even in the midst of world’s biggest depression

Chapter 23: Pile It High and Sell It Cheap

• US outsourcing coffee production to Latin America from its new colonies after Sp Am War established coffee “good neighbor” product— most important export & import
  • From 1934, Roosevelt admin worked to make trade agreements w Latin America (in competition with Europe) to secure US domination in the hemisphere; used import-free coffee & large US market as bargaining tool
• Shift in global coffee prices
  • Brazilian coffees kept getting cheaper → producers started taxing each bag to pay for destruction of another to limit supply until prices stabilized
  • Mild “premium” coffees from Central America could only affect prices by selling more; prices started falling too → cheaper than expected
  • Let premium coffee roasters (ex. Hills’ brothers) work directly with plantations on Santa Ana to process coffee exactly how they wanted, could sell even cheaper
    • Expanded their market across the country, selling premium coffee in more types of stores- supermarkets!
    • Massive explosion of supermarkets in 1930-40s
• Supermarkets: goal = “pile it high, sell it cheap” (high volume principle)
  • Unlike smaller stores, offered as many brands as they wanted, bc could act as own warehouses
  • Coffee = ideal product— brightly packaged, getting cheaper → featured in sales, drew consumers into store
  • Shift in workforce from lots of managers (of each small store) to lots of relatively unskilled labor (check-out people at grocery)
• Change in how people made coffee from percolators → pods
  • Coffee roasters liked this, bc w the former methods (boiled coffee) can make larger quantities with not many beans by boiling longer; also releases more tannins and makes stringent brew
  • Silex pods, drip methods → more coffee per brew, no tannins extracted bc water only goes through once
  • More focus on brewing method, coffee’s popularity continued to rise

Chapter 24: Behind the Cup

• Fourteen Families (coffee elite) emerged from 1930s unrest → oligarchical power, extreme inequity in Él Salvador
• James Hill continued to push for expansion, enlisting help of his three sons
  • Partnered with SF importer → biggest supplier
  • Incentivized sons to keep expanding company by how he gave them parts of land/company, secure political influence
• Hill promoted idea that they needed to invest a little more in supporting workers to prevent future unrest → only way coffee prices stayed low was because of the cheap labor, so need to give a little to stabilize and prevent push for actual fair wages
  • Partnered with military/govt with education initiatives
• Brazil stopped stabilizing coffee prices by destroying supply → shifted to exporting as much as possible → prices dropped to new low
  • Now only option = try to increase supply → pushed marketing efforts in US (iced coffee!)
  • Film “Behind the Cup” shot by Hills Brothers roasters showing Él Salvador coffee production, roasters (referred to the country as “Coffeeland”)

Chapter 25: The War

• US military drank coffee at twice the rate of civilians, supplied primarily by Latin America
• New US-dominated world order after WWII → coffee became more widespread, also supplied by Latin America
  • But region not supported with any development initiatives (industrialization, etc.) like others— continued to be used for agricultural exports
• 1950s, James Hill (original founder of Las Tres Puertas) died— missed outcome of Korean War, a conflict which spread across Asia, etc. for the next 30 years, eventually reaching Él Salvador in the 80s
• Rise of “coffee breaks” in factory work → optimize efficiency... question of whether workers should be paid for this? Gets back to role of coffee in extracting labor from people
  • Ultimately ruled by SCOTUS as compensated time after lots of studies
• UN study on how to make coffee production more efficient, so exports could be used to fund industrialization
  • Looked at production in terms of “energy” (human labor, physical/natural resources, etc.) instead of just money
  • Hoped to prevent “communist” reforms (& resulting US interference) like that in Guatemala by making process beyter
  • Combining these results with calcs of how much work coffee breaks added → 1.5 hours on coffee plantation ultimately worth produced 30+ hours of work once consumed

Chapter 26: Past Lives

• 1960s-80s: Latin American govts very far removed from most citizens
  • Governed by combination of oppression and concession (usually ineffective), harsh contrast with Cuba
  • Suppressed talk of past massacres to build legitimacy of govt
• 1975: militarization of the left in ES met with increasing violence by govt
  • Left funded efforts by holding members of elite for ransom
  • Military shot protesting students
• In the past, sugar = foundation of global economy, and also slavery + what it means to be human
  • 1791: William Fox → pamphlet equating eating sugar to cannibalism; calculations on how much “human flesh” goes into production of sugar (transformation of humans into a commodity)
  • Capitalism → forces humans to labor to meet basic needs; looking at human as energy machine
  • Coffee is analogous product
• Failure to link what goes into making a product like coffee with what is taken from it, to this day, is a failure to see how we are connected to people in far away places, what it takes to make people work
• Fair trade = controversial for all the reasons...
  • Most fundamentally, bc it ties ethics to a monetary sum
  • In reality, tie between coffee production and hunger is still so strong
• How to end hunger in the coffeelands, promote food security and sovereignty (local control of food production and distribution)?
  • Destroy monoculture by introducing fruit trees as shade plants above coffee, beans and corn below
  • Principles beginning to be translated into new ethical certification: make eating a precondition of work, rather than its contingent consequence