Quote of the Day: Laure Waridel on the Coffee Crisis
by Jasmin Malik Chua, Jersey City, USA on 09.21.07
Photo credit: csaba_bajko
The current world prices for coffee—set in New York and London—have fallen to their lowest ever level in real terms. As I write these lines, middlemen are paying peasants in Mexico around 44 cents for a kilogram of coffee that will cost North American or European consumers at least $8 and sometimes as much as $30. Ironically, at a time that growers are in dire straits, big coffee companies are announcing record profits.
Because coffee is the only source of income for many rural families, thousands of people, especially the young, are moving to towns in hopes of a better life. ... It is estimated that plantation workers are leaving at the rate of 500 families per week from the State of Chiapas alone. ... Once so close to the U.S. border, many have hopes of reaching the American Dream. But although goods can easily cross borders, facilitated by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mexicans themselves are kept behind fences. ...
The current coffee crisis is also having an impact on the environment. Most Mexican coffee is grown in mountainous areas, where the ecological balance is already fragile. Under the canopy of the forest, coffee can be produced without using agrochemicals, more sustainably than any crop grown by intensive "monocropping" methods, such as sugarcane or maize. ... Because current coffee prices do not even cover the basic cost of production, many farmers are looking for more lucrative uses for their land. Some peasants are cutting down the forest, selling their wood and cheaply renting their land to large livestock owners. In other areas, coffee plantations are being turned into sugarcane fields. ...
Fair trade involves more than just paying a higher price for a product. It means working towards the goal of more equitable trading relationships between producers and consumers. Fair trade is based on economic justice and aims to empower local people rather than give charity."
—Laure Waridel, Coffee With Pleasure: Just Java and World Trade (2001, Black Rose Books)
For more background information about the coffee crisis and how it's reshaping South America, TreeHugger recommends watching Birdsong & Coffee: A Wake Up Call, which takes a look at the situation from humanitarian, economic, and environmental perspectives.
Is the author serious about the Mexican workers not being able to get into America?
If unfair pricing creates a shortage of coffee through the loss of farms, Fair Trade becomes a commodity itself. In other words, only fair pricing will cause farmers to return to coffee. However, at that point it will be a farmer's market. :-)
As someone who worked on fair-trade coffee 15 years ago, I'm glad to see the mention of it here. And I'm all for bringing up things that aren't the flavor of the month but serious underlying, structural-type issues.
But this quote is from a book published six years ago! Could you at least give some more recent context, particularly when using a quote referring to current commodity prices as this one does? I'd include something here rather than just complaining, except I don't work on coffee and trade anymore and don't have anything substantive to say about it.
@Dave: The truth of the matter is very little has changed over the last six years.
Is the author serious about the Mexican workers not being able to get into America?
Most people in Mexico or central america , or south america CAN NOT come into United states or Canada without a grouling & expensive screening process for a very limited visa.
Lisa, 20 million and counting DISCREDITS THAT IDEA (I like typing in caps for emphasis also). These countries need to improve on their own economies so that their domestic work force is'nt so interested in the "American Dream" and more interested in the "Mexican, Central American, and South American Dreams". It may all be a moot point anyway with the weak dollar these days. It may be time to invest in pesos or Canadian dollars. What do you think about the fairtax?