Organic coffee: Why Latin America's farmers are abandoning it

Résumé du document

Since a long time, the coffee market has been largely unstable. The coffee market is open to speculation. Coffee represents 4% of world trade in food and it is the 2nd raw material marketed worldwide. In 1962, producing and consumer countries signed an agreement setting minimum prices and export quotas. But, in 1989, this agreement was broken and the price of coffee fell.

Extraits

[...] Last year, North American sales reached a record $ 1.3 billion, a 13 percent increase from 2007. Major retailers already struggle to fill demand. Seattle-based Starbucks Corp., the world's largest coffeehouse company, said just 3 percent of its coffee purchases, about 10 million pounds, were organic last year. purchases of certified organic coffee are limited due to the limited quantities available worldwide and the constraints of the organic certification system for farmers,” the company said in a statement issued in response to questions. [...]

[...] But then I tell them the price, per pound,” De Leon says, pointing to an e-mail with an offer to pay $ 1.50 per pound. the coffee just sits there.” Vocabulary mécontentement insistance nocif retenir Commentary Since a long time, the coffee market is largely unstable. The two largest coffee stock exchanges exist since 1882 (New York and London) and today, the coffee market is very open to speculation. Coffee represents of world trade in food and it is the 2nd raw material marketed worldwide. In 1962, producing and consumers countries have signed an agreement setting minimum prices and export quotas. [...]

[...] Ezra Fieser, "Le café organique : pourquoi les agriculteurs d'Amérique latine le délaissent The Seattle Times, mars 2010 Organic coffee: Why Latin America's farmers are abandoning it Latin America produces an estimated 75 percent of the world's organic coffee. But the economic benefits many small farmers were promised if they converted to organic haven't materialized. Some 450,000 pounds of organic coffee sit in a warehouse here, stacked neatly in 132-lb. bags. It's some of the world's best coffee, but Gerardo De Leon can't sell it. [...]

[...] Researchers say that each year, about 75 percent of the world's organic coffee comes from Latin America. Farmers have returned to the chemical fertilizers and pesticides that increase production, albeit at a cost to the environment. Although organic still pays a premium of as much as 25 percent over conventional coffee, it's not enough to cover the added cost of production and make up for the smaller yields. For consumers, the defections threaten to make the coffee harder to find. [...]

[...] So, after the fair trade (which is not always as fair as we can think . producers and distributors have tried a new system based on the new wave of products called “organic” (in the 90s). But the conditions for producing organic products are very restrictive and producers, who were promised higher income, have made many investments. Different protection agency coffee producers have unfortunately failed to supervise the expansion of this new form of production. And now, there is a lag between supply, increasingly important, and demand, which varies randomly. [...]