Poor Farmer

Starbucks is sending staff to Africa to get their hands dirty with coffee farmers. But is it any more than a hollow PR stunt? Starbucks Hampstead Heath manager Jessica Stoller picks coffee beans in Tanzania (Photo courtesy: The Guardian) Patrick Collinson The Guardian November 6, 2010 You'll normally find Laurence Winch at a service station off the A3, behind the counter at Starbucks serving lattes and cappuccinos. But this morning he's picking red coffee berries in a smallholding in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro. Yesterday he was planting coffee saplings in a dusty village co-operative and tomorrow he'll be milling and roasting beans. Starbucks has brought scores of store workers from across Europe to the farms and co-operatives where it sources much of its Fairtrade coffee. It wants to create an "emotional connection" between its staff and their product, one that it hopes they'll share with customers and colleagues. After an hour of scraping and scratc...

By Heather Walsh Bloomberg November 05, 2010 World coffee output may slide next season as stockpiles hover near a record low because of a smaller harvest in Brazil, the world’s biggest producer, the International Coffee Organization said. Global output in the 2011 crop year may fall from between 133 million and 135 million bags in the current season, ICO Executive Director Jose Sette, 55, said yesterday in an interview. He declined to give a specific forecast. “Brazil is such a big chunk that unless there is something unexpected in the other countries, inevitably the next crop year has to be smaller,” Sette, 55, said in Cartagena, Colombia. Coffee has surged 50 percent this year and touched a 13- year high in New York yesterday, as above-average rainfall in Central America and Colombia hurt harvests. Brazil may harvest 36 million bags of coffee next year, down from 47.2 million this year and 39.5 million in 2009, Gilson Ximenes, the head of the National Coffee Council, said ...