Poor Farmer

By Mario Sergio Lima Bloomberg April 11, 2012 Brazilian coffee producers will be granted a 2 billion-real ($1.09 billion) loan from Banco do Brasil SA, said Silas Brasileiro, president of the National Coffee Council. The loan should be available starting in June before the harvest begins, Brasileiro said today in a telephone interview from Brasilia. Last year, producers began to receive financing after the harvest in September, he said. Brasileiro predicted that coffee prices will end this year at a level close to 2011. Banco do Brasil wasn’t immediately available to comment. The price of arabica beans rose to a 14-year high of $3.089 a pound in   New York   on May 3 as heavy rainfall cut output in   Colombia . Coffee slipped 5.7 percent in New York last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. “We never considered retaining coffee,” Brasileiro said. “We want to have a coordinated flow of production.” Arabica coffee futures for May ...

By Leslie Josephs The Wall Street Journal April 10, 2012 NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--The quasigovernmental agency that oversees Colombia's coffee industry is weighing an increase in a fee on exported beans amid a surge in the local currency, an official said Tuesday. The Colombian Coffee Growers Federation, known as Fedecafe, currently collects 6 U.S. cents for every pound of coffee that is exported from the Andean country, one of the world's largest producers of washed arabica beans. But a stronger peso has meant lower revenue for the agency once the fee is converted into local currency. "The [fee] readjustment would be an increase. That's the most likely [outcome]," Luis Fernando Samper, spokesman at Fedecafe, told Dow Jones Newswires in an e-mail. "Today it is 6 [US] cents per exported pound, but converted into Colombian pesos, that amount is barely half of what it was a few years ago." The peso has appreciated around 8% this year ag...

By Daniel Bergner The New York Times April 6, 2012 Jonathan Torgovnik/Reportage Andrew Rugasira, chief executive of Good African Coffee, in the hills near  Kasese, Uganda. When he set out to wedge his coffee onto supermarket shelves in England and America, Andrew Rugasira didn’t start by making phone calls from his home in Kampala,   Uganda. He didn’t begin by sending e-mails. The distance seemed too great for that. At one end of his business were farmers who, until he came along, thought their beans were purchased and carried off to make gunpowder. At the other were buyers at the corporate headquarters of chains like Waitrose and Sainsbury’s, Whole Foods and Wal-Mart. If he was going to succeed, he felt he would have to do it physically; it was as if he believed he could stretch himself to span the divide between the two worlds. So he got on a plane to London, without trying any advance contact. He checked into a London hotel, and from there he called...

By Damian Salla Tanzania Daily News   (Dar es Salaam) Published on March 28, 2012 Coffee could fetch Tanzania an income, worth over US$ 200 million - (T. Shs 300 billion) in foreign exchange annually, through the implementation of a comprehensive grass-root based intervention mapped out in the ten year national coffee development strategy. Capturing the country's enormous productive coffee potential, the strategy outlines (in meticulous detail) five objectives which, could transform the ailing coffee industry into a long term profitable business entity. According to Engineer Adolph Kumburu, Tanzania Coffee Board's (TCB) Director General, production of coffee has stagnated at 50,000 metric tonnes a year over the last three decades, despite vast opportunities which, include large tracts of volcanic soils suitable for high quality coffee farming. Tanzania has 4.8 million ha of land suitable for coffee farming, of which only 200,000 ha (some 35%) is utilised. ...

By Stephen Leighton Has Blog (From the March 2012 issue of Fresh Cup Magazine ) Ethiopia is one of the finest producers of specialty coffee in the world, and it’s the original, natural home of the coffee plant. But while the country is steeped in history, it has lately also become steeped in controversy and red tape. Coffee continues to be one of Ethiopia’s top exports, but its significance is now at an all-time low. In a contradictory development, coffee exports reached the highest-ever level in monetary terms in 2009 ($528 million), while at the same time falling to the lowest-ever share in Ethiopia’s total exports, at just 26 percent. This shows Ethiopia as the developing nation that it is, weaning itself from the dependency of coffee it has had for most of its recent history. It’s an understandable desire from the country, but the country’s move to better organize itself is having a dangerous repercussion: It’s essentially alienating the very buyers who most appreciat...

By Leslie Josephs The Wall Street Journal April 4, 2012 NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--A coffee trade group Wednesday warned importers and exporters about the use of bags made of synthetic fiber, a material that could fail to show damaging water content in beans. "With the increasing availability and use of synthetic bags, we feel it is critical to caution suppliers about GCA contract requirements so that they can continue to conduct lawful commerce and preserve the integrity of the U.S. commodities market," said Brian W. Loughman, chairman of the Green Coffee Association. The New York group, whose contract templates are used widely in the coffee trade, said some green, or unroasted, coffee suppliers were using bags of woven polypropylene and other non-natural fibers to ship coffee. Under GCA contract rules, bags must be made out of natural materials such as jute or burlap, and both parties must agree on the alternative packaging material at the time of contrac...