PHA-Exchange> Coffee Crisis - Failed Development - Health Disaster

[Claudio]

 Oxfam's essay:

"ON THE BRINK OF COLLAPSE"

Oxfam fears that the 'coffee economies' of entire countries are
on the verge of entire collapse. Around 25 million families rely
on coffee for their livelihoods and millions of them would be
affected.

Countries most at risk include Burundi, Ethiopia, Uganda and
Rwanda in Africa and Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guate-
mala, Honduras and Nicaragua in Latin America. Burundi, for ex-
ample, gets almost 80% of its export revenue from coffee.

In real terms, according to ICO president Néstor Osorio, the
price that growers are getting for their coffee is at the lowest
for 100 years. Niche markets such as Fair Trade are vitally im-
portant to encourage but, at only around 0.8% of the total mar-
ket, are too small to save everyone.

More must be done. There are reports of growing social unrest.
The crisis is hitting the commerce, transport, storage and bank-
ing sectors. Tax revenues are down, public spending under pres-
sure and foreign debt mounting.

In ten years, coffee-growing countries have seen income fall
from $12 billion to around $5.5 billion. Meanwhile the retail
value of this same coffee in rich countries has jumped from $30
billion to $70 billion.

Coffee growers in these countries might once have tried to swap
to corn, cocoa, sugar or cotton. But these crops are blighted
now too, protected by high tariffs in the rich northern coun-
tries who also subsidize their farmers to grow cheap produce
that is dumped into southern markets. Poor coffee growers were
given no help at the World Trade Organisation recently when its
rich country members failed to agree on reforms that might have
reduced these agricultural tariff barriers.