The Coffee Bean’s Butterfly Effect

Carlos Velásquez  ·  Medium  ·  7 min read  ·  Photo by Michael Ross from Pixabay

Mathematicians studying chaos theory reference the butterfly effect to underscore how small events can lead to large unpredictable outcomes within complex systems. “A butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can trigger a tornado weeks later in Texas” is a metaphor that, having escaped the confines of interdisciplinary math departments, flutters freely in cyberspace revealing a frequently overlooked fact. Occurrences that appear random are often interconnected.

Fittingly, just as leaves in a Brazilian rainforest teem with butterflies, the pages of history journals teem with specimens of the butterfly effect. An interwoven web of tangled historical narratives readily captures samples of the butterfly effect’s various species. Looking through the lens of history, the camouflage patterns of the Coffee Bean’s Butterfly Effect variety emerge. Examining its metamorphosis and tracing its flight path reveals the consequential developments it has triggered. Take a look.

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The Metamorphosis: From A Lemonade Stand To A Liberal Democracy

In the early 17th century, merchants trading with North Africans introduced the East African Coffea arabica seed, aka the coffee bean, to the port of Venice. Coffee was initially used medicinally, but when a Venitian lemonade stand began selling “wine of Arabia” around 1645, its invigorating quality turned coffee into a popular social drink. Coffee was a cheap stimulant that increased productivity and, like beer, was taxable and safer to drink than untreated potable water; making the Ottoman Empire’s sober coffee-sipping culture an acceptable alternative to drunken liquor taverns, despite the Establishment’s apprehensions of the subversive activities coffeehouses might brew.

By the late 17th century, coffeehouses were widespread in Europe — the equivalent of today’s social media platforms where laypersons and intellectuals share ideas and information. The stimulating thought-provoking coffeehouse conversations energized philosophical debate and scientific reasoning, advancing the Age of Enlightenment and democratic ideals. These ideals invigorated late-night political chatter in places like Café de Foy, furthering revolutionary zeal across Parisian social classes that led to the subversion the Establishment feared, and the abolishment of the French Monarchy. By the end of the 18th century the fundamental principles of liberal democracy, along with the Coffea arabica plant, had taken root in the Western world.

Flapping Its Wings: Stoking Decolonization And Inequality

The French Revolution energized Latin America’s nationalist and democratic ideals. Saint-Domingue, present-day Haiti and France’s most important colony was the first Latin American nation to rebel and declare independence, igniting revolutionary fervor throughout the region. By 1826, most of the New World colonies had gained independence.

The chaotic aftermath of the Haitian Revolution decreased Haiti’s coffee production, which had satisfied half the world’s coffee demand before the rebellion. Latin American plantation owners capitalized on Haiti’s decreased coffee production by increasing coffee yields to match the world’s growing demand: coffee consumption became a political statement in the U.S. following the Boston Tea Party and an essential stimulant for America’s workforce during the Industrial Revolution. The resulting 19th-century coffee plantation societies that sprouted throughout Latin America exacerbated the region’s socioeconomic inequalities, tilling a fertile tropical flowering bed that later seeded decades of political strife and U.S.-U.S.S.R. proxy wars. Nearly two hundred years later, income inequality in six of Latin America’s top eight coffee-producing countries remains among the world’s highest.

A Migratory Path: Leading To Climate Change And Chaos At The U.S. Southern Border

Over the past two centuries, extensive acreages of rainforests in Latin America and other parts of the world have been cleared to grow export crops such as coffee. The heat these acreages of rainforests would have absorbed exacerbates the impacts of climate change. Monocropped coffee production degrades soil and fertilized soil pollutes rivers, creating additional challenges that disproportionally impact subsistence farmers.

Increasingly frequent extreme weather events and less productive farmland drive rural-to-urban migration within Latin America, phenomena that when coupled with lacklustre economies result in urban poverty and high crime rates unalleviated by weak or illegitimate governments. These challenging living conditions motivate thousands of migrants to pursue a better life elsewhere. From 2021 to 2023, the eight top coffee-producing countries observed above — along with Venezuela, which ranks increasingly lower as a coffee producer due to fuel, fertilizer, and pesticide shortages — originated half the migrants seeking entrance at the U.S. southern border. Notably absent are large numbers of migrants from Latin America where coffee exports are a less important economic driver: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Dominican Republic, French Guiana, Guyana, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname, and Uruguay.

The eight coffee-producing countries highlighted here grow 50% of the world’s coffee and, along with ‡Venezuela, originated approximately 50% of the migrants at the U.S.-Mexico Border in 2021–2023. **Brazilian immigrants disproportionately come from the state of Minas Gerais, which produces over 50% of Brazil’s coffee. †Mexico and *Costa Rica make the list of Top 20 coffee-producing nations but are excluded from this analysis — the United States’ proximity to Mexico mobilizes large waves of Mexican migrants across the U.S. border; Costa Ricans are likely accounted for in the “Other” category. ◊Cuba (36th) and ^Haiti (28th) rank relatively high among coffee-producing countries, yet totalitarianism in Cuba and lawlessness in Haiti drive their citizens to the U.S. See borderoversight.org for the annual migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico Border.

Triggering A Political Tornado: With Consequential Impacts In The U.S. And Beyond

Xenophobia is a form of political extremism that exploits social divisions. U.S. immigration policies dating back to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and later echoed in the native-born pushback to newcomers reflected in the Immigration Acts of 1924 and 1965, fostered xenophobia. Today, some political candidates pit the native-born blue-collar class against immigrants, especially undocumented ones, leading to a polarized immigration debate that resurfaces xenophobic sentiment. It’s a debate whose outcome will be consequential given America’s ageing population.

Extreme political views and xenophobia also have societal impacts that transcend demographics, such as when bipartisanship politicized the 2020 COVID-19 response resulting in thousands of avoidable deaths and increased scapegoating xenophobia toward Asians. Or when episodic racism, anti-semitism, and islamophobia occur. In the post-pandemic years, extreme politicking promotes misinformation and makes deliberative facts-based decisions irrelevant to some, giving rise to fringe groups questioning the validity of election results. Immigration, xenophobia, and political extremism are increasingly global phenomena, exacerbating security concerns and creating conditions where social peace is easier to undermine and human rights are increasingly violated.

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Coffee Sommeliers, Rank & Vote Accordingly

Next time you drink a cup of coffee, take a moment to savor it like a coffee sommelier.

Detect the tones coming from migrants’ clamouring at the U.S. southern border, driven there by the bitter inequality in coffee-producing countries whose corrupt leaders the U.S. supported. Taste the acidic economic conditions migrants flee, soured by delinquent U.S corporate loans regularly misused or absconded by the recipient countries’ leaders. When restructured, these loans grant favorable terms to U.S. corporations including low-cost commodity extraction under lax environmental regulations; regulations that permit U.S. military base installations to protect U.S. corporate interests. Consider the pungent aromas spewing from the sewage of the shantytowns some migrants escape, where funds for sanitation, health care, and education are diverted to pay U.S. creditors. Contrast them to the sweet floral undertones of your caffeinated first-world lifestyle, secured by the U.S. military presence abroad.

Before tallying your taste score, explore the potential geopolitical and economic impacts if changes to the immigration flow from coffee-producing countries occurred.

First, given the unpredictable headwinds the butterfly effect can agitate, assess the geopolitical knock-on effect if economic remittances from the U.S. to Latin America decreased. Remittances subsidize even lower wages many Latin Americans earn, such as those earned when picking coffee beans. In light of China’s increasing political influence and the emergence of a Chinese-Russian alliance, clogging the economic safety valve that historically prevented Latin America’s boiling sociopolitical pot from entirely spilling over could rearrange geopolitical alliances in the Western Hemisphere detrimental to the United States’ interests.

Second, in light of the United States’ ageing population, contemplate the butterfly effect that could drift to the surface of U.S. economic data as the infusion of caramel skin-toned migrants stops dripping through the porous filters of the U.S. southern border. Evaluate the heavy, full-bodied, aftertaste experienced from performing the undesirable low-paid work immigrants perform, which helps maintain goods and services affordable for many U.S. consumers. Immigrant labor increasingly provides a bidirectional economic safety valve America’s ageing citizenry would be remiss to clog with ballot votes and with no viable bipartisan immigration reform brewing on the back burner.

Now my fellow coffee lovers turned coffee sommeliers, grade your coffee experience and cast your vote.

It will be consequential in an unpredictable, coffee bean butterfly effect, type way.