Blog post one- campesinos

Deijah Lord-Pugh

Mrs. Mcgowen

ENG IV

August 16 2016

Campesinos

Who are they?..Campesinos are roughly translated to a Spanish peasant farmers. Throughout the book timmerman describes the work they endure under the conditions they are forced to do so in. As the author continues to describe his experiences while searching for answers it comes out from a Starbucks service agent that “the information you're requesting is proprietary information”. The workers who are not paid a living wage are further dehumanized when stripped of their identity and named property. The conditions are so terrible that “There are over one billion farmers and sixty percent of them live in poverty” the workers only receive a fraction of what Americans receive this includes money,food,clothing,etc.

What do they do?..One farmer has the productivity of ten workers, however they “get less than a dollar for selling the same amount” as the ten workers who have the productivity of one farmer. The worker's age range anywhere between small children to the elderly. They pick the pits out of cherries ,leave them out to be dried and processed. In continuation to this process one farmer is given three coffee processors and expected to do the work of ten or more people by themselves. Instead of hiring more workers to do the heavy lifting they utilize the farmers children to do tedious task such as bean picking or carrying heavy sacks.

        Why does this matter? Why is it important?. Because it's unfair. Many people have complained about the fact that “100% Columbian coffee” isn't exactly a hundred percent, However this is a first world problem with simple resolutions. The real problems such as poverty, abuse of child labor and underpaid, over-worked farmers are overlooked and ignored. These people who are stripped of their identities, named as property and work twice as hard as any American do not earn a living wage and can not possibly work to earn a living above poverty. They do not experience first world problems such as mislabeling, but much worse. They've been put into a hole they could not possibly dig out of without any idea that it was done.

                       These farmers..These families..This community of people are stuck living a life that they can not rebuild, can not leave, can not save. The cruel truth is that they're not paid enough to create a better life for themselves, which in turn means that they are stuck in an everlasting cycle that may be broken but is very unlikely. They remain unaware to the damage that has be done by the major corporations that make millions of dollars off of them while they make less than a dollar. Even if they possessed the knowledge and understood what has been going on there's not much that they can do about it, they can not leave because they don't have enough money to go anywhere, they can not quit because that would ensure little chance of survival. Their only option at this point is to wait it out and hope that it gets better.