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There
are the globalizers and the globalized.
arthur
American politicians are currently very busy trying to figure out what to
do about some twelve million illegal migrants currently in the country. The
overwhelming majority of these people are from Latin America. Why did they
feel they had to leave their home countries to find work in the United States?
Probably because they can no longer make a living at home. On my blog a few
days ago, I marveled that Mexico, the mother of all corn, was now importing
corn from the US. Mexican producers could not compete with highly subsidized
American farmers.
Then there is coffee. When I was in Costa Rica a couple of years ago,
everybody seemed to be growing it on small ten acre plots and – at least where
I was – processing and marketing it via local cooperatives. But were they
making enough to get by? Here’s one take on the matter:
It may be hard to understand how coffee growers are going hungry, when
Americans willingly pay up to $4 for a steaming latte — but not if you
look at the economics. ... "From that price, around one cent will go back
to the grower," says Gabriel Silva of the National Federation of Colombian
Coffee Growers. ... There are two reasons: Vietnam has been flooding the
market with low-quality beans, and the four companies that control the
world market have been pushing prices lower. ...In 1997, Colombian growers
were paid $3.80 for a pound of coffee. This year, they've been getting 70
cents. (http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=287548&page=1)
And here’s another:
The problem began with the fall of the Berlin Wall. For years, a
worldwide coffee agreement had kept prices artificially high to prevent
the development of pockets of poverty that would be susceptible to
communist takeover. When the agreement collapsed, the markets opened up
and prices began to vary widely. Countries such as Vietnam and Brazil
sharply stepped up production. Vietnam's output has soared from fewer than
2 million 132-pound bags a year in the early 1990s to 14 million bags,
making it the world's second-largest coffee producer, behind Brazil.
This year, worldwide coffee consumption is expected to equal about 105
million bags. ... But coffee producers are expected to harvest 10 million
more bags than that. Worse, coffee-growing countries already have 40
million surplus bags stored up. ... The huge oversupply has allowed the
coffee traders and big corporations to offer ever-lower prices to farmers
for coffee, but the savings have not been passed on to consumers. ... The
price paid to coffee farmers for a pound of coffee has dropped 75 percent
since coffee briefly peaked at $1.81 per pound in May 1997.
The difference has meant more profits for companies such as Procter
& Gamble, Nestle, Sara Lee and Philip Morris, which together control
about half the coffee market. (Despite Starbucks' ubiquity, the amount the
company buys accounts for only about 1 percent of coffee purchases.)
Ten years ago, coffee-producing countries got about one-third of every
dollar spent on coffee. Now, they get less than 8 cents. http://www.post-gazette.com/world/20021028coffeeworld2p2.asp
So, if you can’t make a living growing coffee, there are a few other things
you can do. You can abandon agriculture and migrate to the city and become
part of the slum population. Or, in places like Columbia, you can grow coca
and produce cocaine for the American market. Or you can put together whatever
savings you have, hire a coyote and get yourself to the US, where the money
is. But there really aren’t very many options.
Ed
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