I wonder if it might be possible to launch
a corporate-responsibility consciousness initiative. I do not mean legislation
and regulated protectionism, but a genuine moral initiative that included
specific looks at specific executive actions and policies, and recognized and morally
rewarded those who reflected that consciousness of responsibility?
Cheers,
Lawry
From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Behalf Of Ed Weick
Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2006
11:01 AM
To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]; Futurework
Subject: [Futurework] Coffee
anyone?
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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