Chapter · Colombia · At the table
A slope, a trademark, a price line
Why Colombian coffee sells for more than the rest
Colombian coffee owes its quality to an impossibility: on a slope like that you cannot mechanise, so you pick by hand, so you choose. This path follows the chain to the end, from the World Heritage file to the rules for calculating world prices.
Context first
A lesson to read before the others, to set the scene.
- The place
- The era
- The people
The lessons in this chapter
- 1Twenty-five per cent of slopeBeyond twenty-five per cent of slope no machine passes: geography is what imposes hand picking, small family plots and bahareque houses above the fields.10 min
- 2A character registered in 1960A character invented in an agency and registered in 1960, a phrase registered in 1969, a geographical indication obtained in 2007: three storeys built in that order, over half a century.10 min
- 3Four groups, and one countryThe world coffee market quotes four groups, and only one carries a country's name. Its price is averaged with nobody else's, and the gap is published every day.10 min
How these lessons are written
Each lesson starts from first-hand sources: Wikisource, Gallica, Persée, archives, museums and institutes. A fact without a source does not get written, and every lesson lists its own as direct links.
The rhythm
A lesson is five minutes of cards and four questions. Those questions then come back the next day, then at 3, 7, 21 and 60 days, and that return is what makes it stick. One a day is enough, and you can do several in a row.