The politics of a cup of afternoon moka...

Today's big cup of moka

I have been working a tiny little bit on the concept of virtual soil today. I haven't seen anyone else doing anything on a concept in the least close to it. It holds a potential to be really interesting but it needs to be discussed thoroughly with friends. What's the point of a concept like it? It is not the same as, but similar to virtual water. It is similar in that I have initially described it (in the Danish magazine Global økologi/Global ecology from October last year) as a way of thinking about the global flow of nutrients in the same way as virtual water may be exchanged between regions (in an ideal world of course all in accordance with Smith and Ricardo's ideas of free trade and comparative advantages), e.g. in the form of fruits and vegetables. 

In short, virtual soil should be understood as the consumption of imported nutrients, i.e. such as one understands virtual water (the consumption of imported water), or in other words the consumption of soil from another region than the one in which you live. However, being so deeply a student of political economy and post-structuralist schools, I cannot help being political about it. 

In fact, in my basic conceptualisation virtual soil is a political concept—harbouring the potential to critically discuss both the post-colonial Northern appropriation of land in the South through 'the market'; the geopolitical difference in so called 'ecological footprints'; the impossibility in fulfilling the Millennium Development Goal of poverty eradication by 2015. I also see it holding potential to understand parts of the infected 'land issue' in a country such as Zimbabwe (and the other countries in which this was really a political issue during the 1970's and 80's; Zimbabwe came kind of late and awkward onto that arena), and the effects of global corporate climate compensation policies involving the creation of so called carbon sinks through tree planting in the South. 

When I brew my cup of afternoon moka I use espresso roasted coffee beans from—I don't know where—called 'columbia' I think it is, but definitely produced somewhere in the South, most likely South America. Good quality. Today's cup more expensive than usual because it was a 'crema'. OK. Apart from that I used a moka brewer of stainless steel (lots, really lots of water going into producing it, and it was produced in Italy probably with Swedish steel, so that's within my 'region', OK, but its base of copper is probably, let's guess from the Zambian copper belt). 

Now, I have by that cup of coffee been drinking not only the water going into growing the bush and the beans, but also a wee bit of South American resources in the form of nutrients from the soil where the coffee grew. As it was regrettably not ecological coffee, I also drank pesti- and other 'cides, while simultaneously also contributing to the pollution of and (hopefully not) degeneration of soil quality in the area where the coffee bushes were grown. I have also supported international companies profiting on my coffee drinking habit. One might argue that at least some money, i.e. resources goes back into the local community—but that's not really true, unless the coffee was fair trade, which it wasn't. The workers get minimal salaries and have few possibilities to move out of their predicament, i.e. no poverty reduction through my afternoon coffee... 

In addition, the copper in the brewer's base was we might suggest from Zambia, where people for decades have been forced to work in the mines to be able to pay for the colonisation of their lands as well as, first their hut taxes, then their children's school fees and books, and the few consumer goods they can afford on the very small (bachelor) wages they receive. All this is part of my cup of coffee. I am through it basically appropriating soil purely to satisfy my perceived need for a good tasting kick, soil which might otherwise have been owned by local farmers (ideally; realistically probably by local Big Men) and used for producing 'real' food, not luxury drinks. I am in other words consuming other peoples  access to that piece of soil's nutrients through my coffee.