This video points out the many positives of traditional shade-grown coffee and details all of the ways that industrially produced coffee is damaging to the environment.
Students will learn about the practices used in industrial coffee production (also used in many other industrially produced crops) that degrade the soil, damage wildlife and water quality, and make it harder for small farmers to make a living.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This video points out the benefits of consumer awareness to support products that are made in a more sustainable and responsible manner.
Additional Prerequisites
The video content ends at 9 minutes, 2 seconds. The last segment discusses other videos and content.
You may have to sit through commercials to view the entire video.
Differentiation
Social studies classes could use this video in lessons about the socioeconomic effects of the expansion of industrialized agriculture in developing countries.
Science classes could incorporate this resource into lessons about ecosystem degradation, regenerative agriculture, or sustainability.
Scientist Notes
This resource explores how some commodities have hidden environmental costs and uses coffee production as an example. This resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
English Language Arts
Speaking & Listening (K-12)
11-12.SL.3 Evaluate a speaker's point of view, perspective, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric, assessing the stance, premises, links among ideas, word choice, points of emphasis, and tone used.
Science
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
HS.ESS3.4 Evaluate or refine a technological solution that reduces impacts of human activities on natural systems.
Social Sciences
Social Science Analysis (K-12)
6.27 Assess individual and collective capacities to take action to address local and regional issues, taking into account a range of possible levers of power, strategies, and potential outcomes.
