Poor Farmer

By Marvin G. Perez Bloomberg February 15, 2013 Coffee farms in Central America may lose 25 percent of exportable production next year because of a crop disease known as leaf rust, providing a “little bit” of a boost to slumping prices, an industry group said. In the 12 months starting Oct. 1, about 3.45 million bags of exportable coffee will be lost from the 13.8 million expected in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Costa Rica, said Jose Angel Buitrago, the president of the Central American Organization of Coffee Exporters, or Orceca, citing figures compiled from the region’s main grower groups. “Irregular, heavy rains in August, followed by an extended period of sunshine and high winds, created the perfect humid conditions for the disease to spread at unprecedented rates,” Buitrago said yesterday in a telephone interview from Managua, Nicaragua. The situation was exacerbated when this year’s harvest began in October, because coffee pickers carry the spores f...

AP via CBSNEWS February 8, 2013 GUATEMALA CITY - Guatemala's president declared a national emergency Friday over the spread of coffee rust, saying the fungus that has hit other Central American countries is affecting 70 percent of this nation's crop. President Otto Molina Perez ordered the release of more than $14 million to aid coffee growers. He said the funds would help 60,000 small farmers buy pesticides and also finance instruction to teach them how to prevent the disease and stop it from spreading. "If we don't take the needed measures, in 2013-2014 our production could drop by 40 percent," Molina said in making his country the third in the region to decree emergencies in recent weeks. Coffee rust, which can kill plants by withering their leaves, also is affecting plantations in El Salvador, Honduras, Panama and Costa Rica. Mexico's agriculture authorities said the fungus has been detected there but so far has not damaged plants....

By Swansy Afonso Bloomberg News February 05, 2013 Coffee exports from India, Asia’s third-biggest supplier, may decline for a second straight year as an economic slowdown in Europe cuts demand and as damage from pest attacks reduces the harvest. Shipments may drop below 300,000 metric tons this year from 310,886 tons in 2012, Ramesh Rajah, president of the Coffee Exporters Association of India, said by phone from Bangalore. Exports fell 9.4 percent last year, the first annual drop in three years, according to data from the Coffee Board of India. A drop in Indian supplies may help limit a 34 percent slump in arabica prices in the past year in New York and cut costs for Starbucks Corp. and Nestle SA. Stockpiles monitored by ICE Futures U.S. reached 2.63 million bags of 60 kilograms each on Feb. 1, the highest since March 2010. Slowdowns in Italy, Russia and Spain, India’s main buyers, curbed demand for the commodity brewed by specialty coffee makers. “The order boo...

Note from Wondwossen : The MoU that is signed between ECX and USAID appears to be signaling an introduction of an electronic coding and marking system along with yet another attempt, after the failed Direct Specialty Trade (DST) platform, to routing farmers' cooperatives to ECX. If this is confirmed, it will be more problematic and needing serious scrutiny and monitoring. It is to be recalled that the new coffee law, which has mandated the trading of all coffee at ECX, exempts cooperatives and commercial farms from the ECX platform and grants them the right to directly trade with buyers and exporters. What would these cooperatives now get by trading through ECX that they couldn't find in direct trade with ultimate buyers? This and related questions call for a closer look at what the ECX/USAID plan is about. As such, the subtitle of this article, "smallholder farmers are going to directly participate in ECX's trading system" is misleading. Under the curr...

COOPCAB, a Haitian coffee co-op that now includes 5,000 members, markets its products internationally while investing money in local reforestation efforts. By Daniel Jensen Global Envision February 1, 2013 On the third anniversary of the quake that killed nearly 300,000, a growing coffee co-op is writing its own success story with loans and homegrown management. Haiti can seem like a place where relief efforts lead only to more disasters, especially in the agricultural sector. Though 70 percent of Haitians are farmers, 60 to 70 percent of the country’s food is imported due to reduced tariffs designed to lower food prices. Meanwhile, further natural disasters have hindered recovery efforts and the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund has announced that it is winding down operations, removing an important source of funding. At the same time, American lawmakers recently extended  farm legislation, including subsidies that allow U.S.  agricul...