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2.4 billion pounds of coffee are sold per year in the United
States. Of that amount, about one sixth (400,000,000 pounds) are
organically grown.
Coffee is the second largest agricultural crop in the world, after
cotton. It is the third most heavily sprayed crop in the world;
Cotton and tobacco are first and second.
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Three-fourths of the coffee grown in the world and the soil
its planted in, is sprayed with some
of the most dangerous chemicals in the world, and some have
been banned from our own country for their toxicity to people.
Some of
these are benoyml, chlordane, cabrflurane,
DDT, endulfan, paraquat,and zineb
One pound of coffee consists of 4000 hand-picked beans. One
hundred coffee beans for one cup of coffee. This represents
one coffee tree per one pound of roasted coffee. |
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If you drink two cups a day, you'll consume
about 34 gallons this year, which represents the harvest of 18 coffee
trees.
If you drink conventional, non-organic coffee, the 18 trees which
supply your morning brew this year will be treated with about 11
pounds of chemical fertilizers and 8 ounces of pesticides. Most
of those chemicals will be washed down hillsides in the streams
that carry away the 43 pounds of pulp stripped from your beans.
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