On 21/04/2010 1:19 a.m., Joe wrote:
On Apr 20, 1:38 am, wrote:
On 20/04/2010 3:28 p.m., Joe wrote:Coffee is the second
most traded item on earth after oil so I figured it's an area where
you can grow if you work hard and provide a good product.

Actually, it appears to be the seventh most traded agricultural product,
and I expect well down after other non-agricultural commodities are
included in a list.

http://www.globalexchange.org/campai...fee/faq.html#1

"Coffee is the US's largest food import and second most valuable
commodity only after oil."

Perhaps they got that off Wikipedia - no?

2005 stats for US imports
Coffee ~ US$3 billion.
Vegetables and fruit ~ $10 billion
Meat ~ $6 billion
Petroleum products incl gas ~ $231 billion
Alcoholic beverages ~ $11 billion
Gold ~ $4.4 billion
Copper ~ $7 billion
Aluminium ~ $12 billion
Footwear ~ $18 billion
Fish ~ 4.5 billion
etc

Lesson - don't trust industry organisations when they might be
pontificating...

Coffee is... well almost peanuts. It seems to be about (less than) 1/3
of 1% of US total imports, about where Toyota will be in a couple of
years at present rate of decline.

Reference:
http://www.indexmundi.com/ (original data from http://www.intracen.org/ )