If you’ve ever sipped on Venezuelan coffee, consider yourself lucky.

During the last several decades, Venzeula’s coffee industry has been in a steep decline. Once prized for its coffee, including varieties from the Maracaibos port and Caracas (named after the capital city) of the country’s eastern mountains, Venezuela now makes less than one percent of the world’s coffee even though it once rivaled Colombia in terms of production.

Venezuela’s coffee industry began to suffer after president Hugo Chávez mandated price controls over coffee in the early 2000s, nationalizing the country’s large roasters. Farmers began selling at a loss to the government. Many found it too unsustainable, turning their focus to other crops or getting out of the farming business altogether. But Trappist monks, best known for producing beer in Belgium, fall under the artisanal producer category, and are protected from the country’s nationalization of coffee. Trappist monasteries require several hours of work each day for the monk residents, and a monastery in Mérida has been leading the charge in the country’s artisan-roasted coffee category. Monks can roast and sell coffee, but at significantly higher prices than the government—selling for about $21 for a half pound, versus the country’s median price of about $1 per pound for the nationalized coffee beans.

The coffee situation is so poor in Venezuela that for the first time in history the country is expected to import more coffee this year than it produces. Blight is devastating what few growers remain. Some of the country’s remaining growers have even resorted to cutting the coffee with corn and other fillers to pad their profits. Current president Nicholas Maduro has banned all exports of Venezuelan coffee, forcing artisan crafters, like the Trappist monks, to compete with the low government prices, or even sell their beans illegally in Colombia.

The monks need help. “We went to the office of the Ministry of Agriculture in Mérida and told them our situation. They gave us the phone number of a depository that might have some green beans in Trujillo,” one of the monks told Vice. “We went to the factory and it was just a bunch of people bagging up B-grade beans from Nicaragua. We can’t sell that as gourmet coffee.” Venezuela’s Ministry of Agriculture recommended the monks look to the black market for illegal beans.

According to Vice, Trappist monks are now petitioning the Venezuelan government for better access to high quality Venezuelan grown beans in order to help preserve the nation’s artisanal coffee industry.

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Coffee image via Shutterstock

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Because every day is better with a new track.

Every day we bring you one track for a little musical inspiration. Have a track you want to submit? Email us at contact@ecosalon.com.

Image: Tomates Fritos

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In his Chronicles of Peru, Spanish conquistador Pedro Cieza de León marveled,” And to think that God should have permitted something so great to remain hidden from the world for so long in history, unknown to men, and then let it be found, discovered and won all in our own time!”

Latin America continues to inspire shock and awe in voyagers, though now they’re more of the backpacking than the stake-in-the-ground variety. Whether it’s rocky mountains, brilliant beaches, charming colonial towns, or rugged cowboys you’re after, you’re likely to find it in the countries of Central and South America.

(above) Volcan Arenal, Costa Rica

Valles Calchaquíes, Argentina

Soriano, Uruguay

Cartagena, Colombia

Salvador de Bahía, Brazil

Goff’s Caye, Belize

Pacific Coast, Costa Rica

Volcán Mombacho, Nicaragua

Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil

Ruta 40, Chile

Armero, Colombia

Machu Picchu, Peru

Lago Suchitlan, El Salvador

Antigua, Guatemala

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Cordillera Province, Chile

Camino al Monte Roraima, Venezuela

Rio de la Plata, Argentina

Montevideo, Uruguay

Ica, Peru

La Paz, Bolivia

Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

Los Altares, Chubut, Argentina

Perito Moreno, El Calafate, Argentina

Laguna Hedionda, Bolivia

Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Chile

Mt. Humboldt, Venezuela

Concón, Chile

Amazonas, Brazil

Tenorio National Park, Costa Rica

Gamboa, Panama

La Colmena, Paraguay

Caye Caulker, Belize

Canchis, Peru

Montevideo, Uruguay

Curitiba, Brazil

Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

Roatan, Honduras

Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

SEE ALSO:

40 Gorgeous Photos of Europe

40 Gorgeous Photos of North America

25 Photos of Islands Threatened By Climate Change

40 Gorgeous Photos of Asia

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From the Street, but trudging up the Hill…

Oh, Oliver Stone. Such a confusing (or is it confused?) Hollywood conspiracy theorist. The Academy Award-winning director of JFK, Nixon and W. has profiled another iconic figure for his latest opus (no, not Wall Street 2).

South of the Border, a documentary about revolutionary Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his left-wing Latin American allies, opened in London this week, and like with many of his historical previous filmic endeavors, Stone’s new movie ties ideas from many opposing sources and forces, and stretches the yarn so that it almost becomes threadbare. A mad scientist at the edit bay, Stone has chopped and cut this doc so that it covers the green movement. He posits that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is an eye-opener for the United States, in that it should follow the example of South American socialists in nationalizing its energy industry.

Further, he decries that America’s country’s natural wealth was too important to be left in private hands, telling interviewers that oil and other natural resources “belong to the people.” What does BP have to do with Hugo Chavez? Not a thing, unless you pitch that question to Stone.

“This BP oil spill is typical” of what happens when private industry is allowed to draw revenue on what should be a public good, he says. “We shouldn’t make this kind of profit on oil or on health or on war or on prisons. All these industries should be public industries.”

South of the Border sheds light on the social improvements ushered in by Chavez, who has nationalized parts of Venezuela’s economy, including segments of the oil sector, as well as parts of the banking, electric and steel industries.

“Generally speaking the economy has surged in Venezuela from 2003 to 2008. This is a story that people don’t know,” Stone said.

He also referred to President Barack Obama as “Bush not-so-lite.” Given that he seemed to fawn over the previous commander in chief in 2008’s critical and box office misfire W., I’m not sure President Obama needs to worry about being assessed in such a fashion by the Oliver Stone of today. In the 90s, the director was crafting sensationalist (some might call propaganda) pieces that derided Nixon sympathizers and Reaganites and deified (while embalming) John F. Kennedy. Even scatterbrained and schizophrenic works like U-Turn seemed like they were biting the hand that reared, let alone fed them. But by the 00s, his movies got softer, more contextual and shapely. World Trade Center tried to satisfy both political parties, and W. was practically a eulogy to the 43rd President of the United States.

A couple of things:

Chernobyl was nuclear power as run by a government that owned everything for the people. When the government is put in charge, without private influence whatsoever, the power over industry is all concentrated in one body, the government. Doesn’t Oliver Stone make movies about how corrupt government is?

I wonder how he’d feel if the news media and entertainment industry were nationalized too. Might not have the leverage he’s got now, and you just know he’s got a movie in him about government-controlled media. Oh, wait, Natural Born Killers.

When Stone made the first Wall Street, the film’s tag line and mantra (intentionally or otherwise) was, “Greed is good.” The movie still feels like a corporate orientation video for new hedge fund employees. And its sequel, back by popular demand, focuses on another movement – the green movement. He might as well muddle that hot topic, too.

Let the mixed messages begin.

Editor’s Note: This is the latest installment in Christopher Correa’s weekly column, Hill/Street Greens, examining the environmental deeds (and misdeeds) of Washington, D.C. and Wall Street.

Image: nicogenin

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