1. Background Story: Many people drink coffee nowadays; for some countries it’s an important export, second only to oil. As in any situation where there’s a lot of profit to be made, the people who do the actual work are often exploited. Various organizations began selling fair trade coffee as a way to help improve the plight of coffee farmers in third world countries, and the movement has been picking up momentum. However, it seems that most coffee actually sold in grocery stores is still the ‘regular’ kind, and so for my science class Fermi question I wondered: how much does the world spend on fair trade coffee in a year?
2. Ask Yourself This: How much coffee does the average person drink every day?
What percentage of the world's coffee is fair trade?
How many people are awake in the world during any given hour?
How much does fair trade coffee cost?
3. Helpful Hints: The average person consumes 1.3 kilograms of coffee per year (chartsbin.com). There are about 7.2 billion people in the world.
About 4 percent of coffee in the world is fair trade (ssireview.org).
Coffee costs on average about $4 per pound at a grocery store (onswipe.investopedia.com).
Fair trade coffee costs on average 65 cents more per pound than non-fair trade coffee.
Fair trade coffee costs about $4.65 per pound
One kilogram is about 2.2 pounds.
4. Construct a Formula: person/kg * world/person * kg/pounds * pounds/fair trade * fair trade/price = world/price
5. Messy Math: 1 person/1.3 kg * 1 world/7.2 * 10^9 people = 1 world/9.36 * 10^9 kg
1 world/9.36 * 10^9 kg * 1 kg/2.2 lbs = 1 world/20.592 * 10^9 lbs
1 world/20.592 * 10^9 lbs * 1 lb/ .04 fair trade = 1 world/ 0.82368 * 10^7 fair trade
1 world/0.82368 * 10^7 fair trade * 1 fair trade/$4.65 = 1 world/$3.830112 * 10^8
$3.830112 * 10^8 = $383,011,200
6. Answer: So the entire world spends $383,011,200 on Fair Trade coffee in a year.
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