Naked but Eating Peanut Butter

In the category of food, next to my daily bread I most value peanut butter. I waxed eloquent on that subject two years ago on the old LaMarotte (link); there I called America the Zone of Heavenly Oils and concluded the post by saying: “One cannot praise peanuts, and peanut butter, frequently and ardently enough.” So I am prejudiced.

The other day I had occasion to note here that Global Warming was threatening coffee and cocoa—two more natural products I’d add to the list of the Indispensables. Elsewhere (link) I have suggested that in a forced-choice between coffee and chocolate on the one hand and gasoline on the other, I would choose coffee and chocolate. Now we learn that (groan! wail! sob!) peanuts are under attack—and possibly from the same cause. Drought has devastated the peanut crop—and plantings were, in any case, already down. Why? Well, farmers prefer to grow corn and cotton because these crops yield higher profits. So is it to be Cotton or Peanut butter? My choice is already made. I’d gladly go naked if I could still have my jar of Smucker’s Natural Peanut butter. And I’ll gladly walk to the store to get it, lacking gasoline, so that I might buy Taster’s Choice and Lind’s dark chocolate while I am out—but with an old newspaper draped around my privates using my last cotton string.

Coffee Growing Regions of the Globe

News surfaced yesterday, offered by Starbucks, that the long-term viability of coffee is threatened by Global Warming. Herewith an image of the world’s coffee-growing regions courtesy of Coffee Tea Warehouse (link). The regions marked in yellow are the top ten coffee growing regions, their leader being Brazil. Coffee-growing is an equatorial sort of pursuit, the activity falling between the Tropics of Cancer and of Capricorn. From the National Coffee Association of America, Inc., I have it that 125.2 million bags of coffee (each weighing 132 pounds) were produced in the 2009/10 season. Coffee production has been trending down. According to the International Coffee Organization (ICO) the Finns are most addicted to coffee, consuming nearly 10 kg per person (data for 2000). Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, France, Italy, and Brazil all outrank us here. Our own consumption is put at 4 kg per capita by the ICO.