The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
Larry Schwartz -
It’s an age-old question: What’s better for you, coffee or tea? Even back in the 18th century, inquiring minds wanted to know. King Gustav III of Sweden, being of the belief that coffee was poisonous, devised an interesting experiment to answer the question definitively. He found two identical twins in prison, both sentenced to death for crimes they had committed. Gustav III commuted their sentences to mere life imprisonment (which was no picnic either, given prison conditions...
Although there are almost 125 species of coffee, we only use two species to produce the beverage drink. These are Arabica and Robusta coffee.
Arabica is a very special plant. It's a hybrid formed between two different species that came together maybe a million years ago somewhere in a forest in Ethiopia. It was a unique event that happened just once.
When it was taken out of Ethiopia to plantations in other parts of the world, Arabica's genetic diversity was greatly diminished, leading...
Saliem Fakir -
About 2.5 billion cups of coffee are consumed every day.
Culture and coffee are treated as synonymous. Ever since the first coffee shops opened doors in the Middle East, around the 15th century onwards, coffee culture spread like wild fire in the western world.
Coffee houses are places where artists, writers, intellectuals and those seeking the pleasures of good conversation are meant to hang out. However, this image of civility belies the real world of coffee trade, which is far more...
