Poor Farmer

Reuters San Salvador October 31, 2011 Oct 31 (Reuters) - El Salvador on Monday cut its forecast for growth this year to 1.4 percent from 2.1 percent due to heavy rains that damaged coffee crops in the Central American exporter. Strong storms hit southern   Mexico, Salvador and the rest of Central America for nearly two weeks earlier this month, killing around 130 people and displacing thousands. Central America together with Mexico grows more than one-fifth of the world's arabica coffee. The rains took a $150 million toll on the country in terms of damage to housing, roads and agriculture, said Alex Segovia from the president's office. "The biggest impact is on agriculture," he told reporters at a press conference on Monday. Procafe, the country's coffee association, cut its estimate for coffee production in 2011/12 crop to 1.33 million bags (60-kg bags) earlier this month, from the previous 1.41 million bags due to rain damage. The...

By Marvin G. Perez Bloomberg October 31, 2011 Oct. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Inventories of arabica coffee held in warehouses monitoried by IntercontinentalExchange Inc. tumbled 11 percent in October from September, the biggest decline since 1998, according to data from the exchange. Stockpiles plunged to 1.267 million bags, the lowest since 2000 and down 30 percent from 1.817 million bags held a year earlier, data from the Atlanta-based exchange show. A bag weighs 60 kilograms, or 132 pounds. ---  Related story… ICE Arabica Coffee Futures Plunge By 5% The Wall Street Journal October 25, 2011 NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Arabica coffee futures plummeted 5% Tuesday, as investors cashed in on a rally fueled by concerns that flooding in Colombia and Central America would hurt supplies of quality coffee this season. At 11:55 a.m. EDT, arabica coffee for December delivery was trading at $2.3840 a pound, down 5% on the day. "I think it's more liquidati...

By Marvin G. Perez Bloomberg October 31, 2011 Coffee fell to a two-week low as concern mounted that Europe will fail to contain the region’s debt crisis, while the dollar’s rally eroded the appeal of commodities. Sugar and cocoa also declined. The greenback jumped as much as 1.9 percent against a basket of six currencies after Japan took steps to weaken the yen. Global equities tumbled as investors awaited details from European leaders on funding the expanded bailout. The Standard & Poor’s GSCI index of 24 raw materials fell as much as 1.7 percent. “There are new worries about Europe,” Sterling Smith, a commodity analyst at Country Hedging in St. Paul, Minnesota, said in a telephone interview. “The dollar got stronger, and suddenly, there’s a drop in risk appetite. Fundamentals are being put on the shelf. People are stepping to the sidelines.” Arabica coffee for December delivery dropped 3.5 percent to $2.2695 a pound at 2 p.m. on ICE Futures U.S. in New Yo...

Following up the Coffee Export Regulatory Directive that was issued on May 2011, the Ministry of Trade has decided to ban some 50 to 55 operators on the basis of failure to comply with the directive. “If an exporter was found storing 500 tons and above without legal shipment contract singed for it,  the company would be banned from the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) for three consecutive months, while for a volume ranging from 54 to 500 tons a two month penalty would be applicable,” the directive states. According to the industry players, the international price surge impacted the local market to push the price of coffee at the ECX to escalate. Hence, some of the contractual agreements signed before the price surge could not be honored as it entail loss to the exporters. Some of the foreign buyers appear to be shocked by the news as most of the companies in the list were among the prominent and most active in the industry. Ministry of Trade to ban 3/4 of the active coff...

By Cecil Morella  October 29, 2011 ( AFP ) Civet cat droppings are worth a small fortune as they  remove the bitter aftertaste of coffee beans (AFP, Noel Celis) LIPA, Philippines — Philippine farmers used to hunt and kill the civets that ate their coffee beans -- until they realised the animals' droppings were worth a small fortune. Now the ravenous nocturnal raider with the pungent faeces has a status akin to the fabled goose that lays the golden eggs among farmers like Rustico Montenegro, who cleans up after the weasel-like mammals. "Never in our dreams did we suspect that we could make money out of them," said Montenegro, 44, who switched a few years ago from picking ripe cherries on coffee trees to gathering the undigested seeds excreted on the forest floor. The small, tree-dwelling palm civet eats the outer fruit of the coffee bean but passes the rest through its stomach. It is there that the enzymes and acids in the civet's hyper-a...

Beginning at midnight Saturday, coffee sales to consumers will be halted for a week to give grocers an opportunity to fill up gaping spaces on their shelves. State OPA authorities have been advised by coffee experts that even coffee that has been packed in vacuum tins will not keep fresh indefinitely, that it may turn stale in anywhere from a month to a year. In many cases, the first two or three cups of coffee made from a can of vacuum packed coffee that has been hoarded for more than a month will taste fresh but the remainder will be stale because of the oil in the coffee bean turning rancid. Persons having hoarded coffee would be denied additional quantities until the coffee in their possession is reduced to comply with regulations. --- Ed's Note:   Coffee in Retrospect   is a reprint column prepared by   Coffee Monitor   and   Poor Farmer   blog to provide context for the current global coffee trade by republishing news   articles fr...

Heather Murdock Voice of America October 27, 2011 Louis Ntiricakeza is one of the few Rwandan farmers already  growing coffee underneath bananas, October 2011.  Photo: VOA - H. Murdock Sakara, Rwanda - Over the next three to four decades, temperatures in the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa are expected to rise about two degrees Celsius. Scientists say without immediate innovations in farming, crops will be devastated and the region will be thrown into chaos. So Rwanda is experimenting with what is already widely practiced in some neighboring countries. They are growing banana and coffee plants on the same soil to prepare for the new climate in the long term, and to grow the economy in the short term. Frederick Musangwa has a farm in Rwanda. He grows bananas to eat, and coffee to sell. He cooks over a wood fire, and has no electricity or running water. In the past, he grew food crops to feed his family and sell in the market, and earned about $11...

By Heather Walsh Bloomberg October 24, 2011 Colombia, the world’s second-largest supplier of Arabica coffee beans, may produce its smallest crop in two years in 2011 because of excess rain that poses a risk for next year’s harvest, according to a top growers’ leader. Output may slide to less than 8.5 million bags this year, said Mario Gomez, a member of the board of Colombia’s National Federation of Coffee Growers for almost three decades. In August, the Federation cut its forecast to 9 million bags, from 9.5 million previously. Last year’s crop was 8.9 million bags. “Output could be hit mainly because of the weather,” Gomez said in an interview on Oct. 21 near the city of Manizales in the heart of Colombia’s central coffee-growing region. “Production isn’t responding. Coffee like no other product needs light” and periods of dry weather, he said. Coffee has jumped 25 percent in 12 months as lower production in Colombia contributes to a slide in stockpiles of the...

Coffee Drinkers Less Likely to Develop Most Common Type of Skin Cancer By   Jennifer Warner Reviewed by   Laura J. Martin, MD WebMD Health News October 24, 2011 Drinking coffee may help prevent the most common type of   skin cancer. A new study shows that women who drank more than three cups of coffee per day had a 20% lower risk of developing basal cell carcinoma (BCC) than women who drank less than one cup a month. Men who drank more than three cups of coffee benefited from a 9% reduction in risk of this type of skin   cancer. Drinking decaffeinated coffee did not have any effect on skin cancer risk, which leads researchers to suspect   caffeine   is the key ingredient. "It is likely that caffeine has a protective effect," researcher Fengju Song, PhD, postdoctoral fellow in dermatology at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, says in an email. "BCC risk was inversely associated with caffeine." But be...

By Mia Lamar The Wall Street Journal October 24, 2011 Sara Lee   Corp. has sold the majority of its North American foodservice coffee and tea operations to   J.M. Smucker   Co. for $350 million in cash, continuing a slimming-down effort at the packaged-foods company. Sara Lee has worked in recent months to sell off businesses and narrow its focus. The company is currently in the process of splitting apart, separating into an international coffee and tea business and a North American business that includes the Jimmy Dean and Hillshire Farms brands. "Our decision to sell a major part of this business to Smucker is an example of Sara Lee Coffee and Tea's renewed focus on sustainable, profitable growth and part of our mandate to create the strongest possible pure-play company," said Executive Chairman Jan Bennink. The deal is expected to close in the beginning of next year. Also Monday, Sara Lee said that its Senseo coffee business in North America wil...

The Hindu October 23, 2011 Picture: Courtesy of The Hindu COONOOR, Oct . 23: The Coffee Board says the shortfall in global coffee production to continue this year as well. Speaking at the 118th Upasi annual meet on commodity outlook for coffee, Mr M. Chandrasekar, Secretary, Coffee Board, said: “South America is yet to recover and the shortfall for crop year 2011-12 is expected to be around 3.10 million bags.” Global arabica output is expected to be down by 6 per cent at 78.76 million bags and robusta up by 1.7 per cent at 50.71 million bags. Major production gain is seen in Columbia 10 million bags (10 per cent) Uganda 3.2 million bags (14 per cent). Shortfall is seen in Brazil 43.15 million bags (10 per cent), Vietnam 20-22 million bags (10 per cent) Indonesia 6.7 million bags (27 per cent). Coffee prices witnessed downward correction in September, but is still relatively firm, particularly in arabica. The decline is mainly caused due to disinvestment...