The Place of Coffee in Trade with Latin America

Abstract

COFFEE AS AN article of commerce and as a factor in our daily lives deserves more study and more consideration than it normally receives. As human beings, we associate an early morning consciousness of its unique and matchless aroma with the most pleasurable sensations of life. As students of commercial geography we are vaguely aware that its principal production is found in South and Central America: as students of economics and merchandising we have some notions, usually vague and usually wrong, concerning the various Brazilian coffee control schemes. What we don't know, or too little appreciate, is the fact that for all practical purposes trade in coffee is Pan American commerce. Without the coffee trade it is probable that our ties with Latin-America, now of such vital importance, would be about as. important to us as our commercial ties with the African Gold Coast. This is true not only because of the very large value attached to our imports, but to the fact that coffee is produced in important quantities by such a large majority of the Latin American countries. In the period 1937-1939 coffee alone represented 34.5 per cent of the value of exports from the fourteen producing countries, and for the most important individual countries the percentage ranged from 44 to 99. This trade in tonnage and value usually ranks among the first three in total United States imports. In our own domestic economy the use of coffee is responsible for the use of some seventy million dollars worth of sugar annually, and makes quite important a contribution to our dairy industry. Coffee, however, has an importance beyond its position as a principal item of export and import between Latin America and the United States. The highly organized industry necessary for the handling of the crop furnishes the contact and organizational background from which many other lines of imports are handled. In other wo ds it is the large and steady trade in coffee that maintains the banking, transportation and other commercial facilities on which all Pan American trade must depend for life and for growth. The day may come when countries of Central and South America are great producers of steel and rubber and cotton goods. They may develop profitable home industries. Some of them may become great industrial states. But today, the majority of them are interested in the production and sale of coffee. It is in this field almost alone that practically immediate results can be expected in our effort to create a solid Western Hemisphere economic bloc. It is literally true that if coffee couldn't have been sold in the United States in increased quantities and at fair prices, every effort at Western Hemisphere solidarity would have been doomed in advance to costly and humiliating failure. Neither a two ocean navy nor a navy for all the seven seas can defend the Western Hemisphere if half of it doesn't want to be defended. As practical men we must realize that friendship between nations may be encouraged only to a very limited extent by good will envoys and attempted exchanges of cultural assets. By and large every nation in its relation with others is guided principally by the slogan Whose Bread I EatHis Song I Sing.