Caffeine

A South American country’s rich folk life is on display at the Smithsonian Museum.

For the Geo Quiz we’re on the island of Cuba, looking for its largest mountain range. It’s known for its coffee plantations but these days there isn’t enough coffee in Cuba – once a major coffee exporter – to even meet the demands of the local population.

In Veracruz State in Mexico, some coffee growers are trying out alternative methods to the otherwise water polluting ones used throughout Latin America. Jana Schroeder reports from the fields.

Commentator Alan Durning had a kind of dream about the negative global impacts of his coffee drinking addiction, and he has given it up for locally grown herb tea. Experience this aural epiphany.

The Mexican government is encouraging coffee growers to plant on coffee farms, or plantations. Jana Schroeder reports on the consequences of harvesting coffee continually on the same soil, and how the move away from shade tree coffee growing is also affecting migrating birds and wildlife.