Poor Farmer

Coffee price rises not as harsh as expected, study finds The results of the 2011 September Quarter Gilkatho Cappuccino Price Index are in, and while there has been an average price hike of 15 cents per take away cup, this is better than what the market had predicted. Hospitality Magazine December 5, 2011 The Index showed an average price increase of 15 cents per cup for take away coffee and 17 cents per cup for dine-in during the past 12 months across Australia, and while Gilkatho managing director, Wayne Fowler admits that 63.1 per cent of the coffee shops surveyed had increased their prices in the past year, they were not as high as originally predicted. "2011 has delivered some of the price increases expected by record increases in coffee futures experienced at the start of 2011, but commercial pressures and the continued evolution of a more discerning cafe culture in Australia has kept the expected increases in the cost of take away and dine-in coff...

By   Brian Krepshaw CNET December 3, 2011 Photo Credit: Scanomat via CNET Modern living has made life easier in a number of significant ways, with plumbing and electricity topping the list. As a society we've become accustomed to things working with a press of a button or turn of a handle, but that doesn't mean basic necessities cannot be improved upon. Coffee--a well-known necessity of life--may be plentiful and readily available, but many would consider that to be just a start. Improving upon the accessibility of coffee is the  Scanomat TopBrewer. At first glance the spigot may elicit a question about why a water faucet would be mounted in that particular place--especially without a sink to go with it--but then upon further examination, the device would be revealed to be not a water faucet, but a  coffee  faucet. Finally, we can all stop acting like heathens and enjoy coffee the way it was meant to be enjoyed--like it poured forth from som...

By  Shailaja Sharma   DNA December 2, 2011 After Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts, Australia’s premium coffee company Di Bella Coffee is queuing up to enter India’s $441 million (Rs2,270 crore) cafe chain business that has established retailers like Cafe Coffee Day, Costa Coffee and Barista Lavazza. Di Bella is likely to open as many as six outlets in Mumbai by January 2012, which will be followed by expansion in Delhi and Hyderabad. Di Bella Coffee’s top officials visited Mumbai this week to narrow down on locations for stores across malls and high streets. Founded in 2002 in Brisbane, the company runs over 1,242 wholesale and retail outlets in Australia, New Zealand and China, and India will be its next aggressive international foray, Rahul Leekha, general manager - operations, Di Bella Coffee India, said. He declined to comment on investments made in India, but said the coffee chain business in India is growing by 40%. The Indian entity, Di Bella Cof...

By Beatrice Gachenge Reuters November 29, 201 NAIROBI   (Reuters) - Africa's coffee output could leap by a third within the next five years as farmers scramble to replace mature trees with disease-resistant seeds to cash in on soaring global prices for the beans, a senior industry official said. Poor prices, drought, disease and political instability in major producers such as Ivory Coast have led to neglect of coffee farms, while some farmers ditched the commodity in favour of planting staple foods such as maize. But Denis Seudieu, chief economist at the International Coffee Organisation, told Reuters that countries like Uganda, Kenya, Cameroon and Tanzania have come up with hardier seedlings that produce higher yields, and are reaching out to new markets. "If major producing countries aggressively implement and rehabilitate the coffee sector by supporting and trickling benefits to farmers, we are optimistic in five years production will increase by ...

By Grace Soong China Post November 27, 2011 The China Post--For the first time in history, coffee beans native to Honduras are packaged in Taiwanese creativity, and together the two nations will challenge the international coffee market, as announced at the beverage exhibition in the Taipei World Trade Center (TWTC), yesterday. Set up in the center of the TWTC Hall 1 is a special Central America coffee-themed booth, where the five major Central American coffee producers — El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama — demonstrate their ambition to promote their native flavors to the world. Especially unique to this year's Taipei Tea, Coffee, and Alcohol Exhibition (2011 台北茗茶 ˙ 咖啡 暨美酒展 ) is the newly revealed flavorful cooperation between Taiwan and Honduras: the best coffee beans from six regions of Honduras are packed in Taiwan-designed packages, and will be available in five major airports in Honduras. “Our coffee beans are of highest value in t...

By William Neuman The New York Times November 23, 2011 Rink Dickinson, president of Equal Exchange, a pioneer importer of  fair trade coffee, chocolate, tea and bananas.  Mr. Dickinson called the move by Fair Trade USA a "betrayal." A tempest in a coffee pot is bubbling in the world of “fair trade,” the socially responsible food movement that seeks to lift farmers in the developing world out of poverty by offering them a premium for crops like coffee, cocoa and bananas. And the fight will soon reach your local Starbucks, Wal-Mart and Whole Foods. Fair Trade USA, the movement’s leading advocate in the United States, angered critics by saying it would cut its ties at year’s end with the main international fair trade group and make far-reaching changes in the sorts of products that get its seal of approval. The changes include giving the fair trade designation to coffee from large plantations, which were previously barred in favor of small farms. Th...

By Marvin G. Perez Bloomberg November 22, 2011  Coffee’s biggest slump in three years may be ending as weather damages crops from Colombia to Indonesia, reducing U.S. inventories to the lowest since 2000 just as Kraft Foods Inc. and J.M. Smucker Co. cut prices. Stockpiles in warehouses monitored by ICE Futures U.S. fell 16 percent since December, declining for a fourth year, exchange data show. Arabica-coffee futures, already poised for the highest annual average price on record, may rise 14 percent to $2.71 a pound by March, according to the average estimate of 13 traders and analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Prices rallied 7.8 percent from a nine-month low in October as the heaviest rains in two decades damaged Central American plantations, Colombia reported a 19 percent drop in output last month, while exports slowed from Brazil, the world’s top grower. The London-based International Coffee Organization already expects production of arabica,...