COFFEE NEWS

Mexico aims to plant millions of new coffee trees in a bid to catch up to its Latin American neighbors after slipping down the ranks of major world coffee exporters.

Mexico, once the world’s No. 6 coffee exporter, dropped to 12th place in 2004 as the country suffered a coffee crisis due to a combination of natural disasters and a global collapse in coffee prices.

The government now plans to launch a five-year program of subsidies to farmers who add trees to sparsely planted plots or replace aging trees whose productivity has declined.

The program, promoted by the newly reconstituted National Coffee Organization, hopes to reach a third of Mexican coffee farmers — a group with about 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres) under cultivation.

In southern Mexico, where most coffee is grown, rolling hills are covered with shaded coffee farms — some more than a century old — that produce fewer cherries each year.

Hurricane Stan washed away entire mountainsides and nutrient-filled topsoil in 2005, the most recent natural disaster to batter the region.

“The land is very tired, it has faced hurricanes, winds, natural deterioration. Everyone here has a smaller harvest, less maintenance, less investment,” said Ingrid Hoffman, a coffee farmer in Tapachula, Chiapas near the Guatemalan border.

Mexico harvested 4.2 million 60-kg bags of coffee in the 2007/08 season and sees between 4.5 and 4.8 million bags of output in the upcoming harvest. That will be a far cry from the nearly 6 million bags the country grew before the coffee crisis, said Rodolfo Trampe, head of the national coffee organization Amecafe.

In 2000, Mexico was the world’s sixth-largest coffee exporter. The country dropped to 12th place in 2004 and now ranks eighth behind much smaller countries like Honduras and Guatemala, according to International Coffee Organization data.

Mexico on average produces about six 60-kg bags per hectare (2.5 acres), while other Latin American countries yield more than double that, Trampe said in an interview.

“There are states … with a very traditional concept of coffee production from the 1950s or 60s,” Trampe said. Some farms only have 700 or 800 trees in an area that could support up to 3,000, he said.

EXCHANGE RATE BOOST

Farmers, many with families who have worked the plantations for generations, also are struggling to recover from a collapse in coffee prices at end of the 1990s and early in this decade.

“The decline began with the crisis. There has been some recovery but not enough to make us economically viable,” Hoffman, a descendant of some of the German settlers who bought large swaths of land to grow coffee in Mexico and Guatemala.

The renovation program aims for all voluntarily enrolled farmers to plant at least 1,600 new plants on each hectare over five years.

Specialized technicians will help certify the new coffee as high-quality, in an effort to boost the reputation of Mexican beans, which have fallen behind gourmet Central American varieties.

The renovation plan comes as farmers, long hit by high input costs, are benefiting from lower fertilizer prices and a depreciating Mexican peso, which makes exports more attractive.

“We sell all over Europe and the United states so obviously the exchange rate will help,” said Hoffman, whose series of plantations are producing 75 percent less coffee than they did 20 years ago.

“I think one day we will be able to recover,” she said.

Source: http://www.forexpros.com/news/general-news/centam-coffee-mexico-eyes-new-planting-to-boost-coffee-output-32709

Chalk up another environmental benefit for shade-grown Latin American coffee: University of Michigan researchers say the technique will provide a buffer against the ravages of climate change in the coming decades.

Abundant harvests and soaring demand from non-traditional coffee importers propelled Indonesia’s coffee bean exports during the first half of the year, allowing the country to cash in on the high global price of the commodity.

More than 350 exporters grouped under the Association of Indonesian Coffee Exporters (AEKI) revealed recently coffee exports rose 12.5 percent to 180,000 tons between January and June this year compared to in the same period last year.

Executive Secretary of the AEKI, Rachim Kartabrata, told The Jakarta Post high rainfall this year had provided farmers with larger harvest yield.

“If such conditions continue, we are optimistic some 540,000 tons of coffee beans can be harvested this year, or up 6 percent from last year’s 510,000 tons,” he said.

The association expects total coffee exports to reach 170,000 tons in the second semester, and 350,000 tons for the year, up from 290,000 tons last year and 307,880 tons in 2006.

Robusta accounts for up to 80 percent of Indonesia’s total production, while Arabica accounts for the remainder. Indonesia’s main export destinations are the United States, western Europe and Japan.

Rachim said the jump in exports was also attributable to a surge in demand from emerging markets, including Russia, China, Taiwan, South Korea and Malaysia.

With higher-than-expected harvests, farmers and exporters are already capitalizing on the relatively high global coffee prices. Robusta is currently priced at US$2.2 per kilogram and Arabica at $3.08 per kg.

“From the current market price, farmers can still get higher profits because they only spend around Rp 3,500 (38 US cents) per kilogram on production costs,” he said.

According to the association, coffee hit its lowest point on the global market in 2002, with the beans selling for as low as Rp 2,500 per kg, forcing 170 exports in Lampung, the country’s biggest coffee-growing province, to go out of business.

Subsequently, many farmers turned to corn and cassava, which are simpler to cultivate and generally reap higher profits. However, current coffee production is still able to match domestic and global demand.

“Farmers will need only six months to harvest cassava crops, while they need up to three years to plant and harvest qualified coffee beans,” Rachim said, adding that most coffee plantations in Indonesia were currently at their productive peak.

The AEKI estimates farmers in several Robusta coffee centers, including Lampung and South Sumatra, will enjoy high revenue during harvest season, which spans June and July.

Arabica farmers in North Sumatra and Nangore Aceh Darussalam will harvest again in October, having just come off the back of an enormous harvest in May.

However, Rahma, owner of coffee grower and processor CV Gudang Ketiara, in Takengon, Aceh, said global demand for coffee could slump due to the world-wide economic slow down.

“I heard that some buyers in Europe and the United States have capped their orders due to slow sales there. I hope the government can help us find new buyers from other non-traditional importers,” she said.

CV Gudang Ketiara employs more than 150 workers and ships at least 18 tons of Gayo Arabica beans to Europe every month.

Indonesia is the fifth biggest coffee producer in the world, after Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia and Mexico.

Indonesian coffee is mainly traded in London and New York.

As reported by Bloomberg on Friday, coffee rose for a second day on the London commodity exchange due to speculation roasters had recently secured supplies when prices hit a two-week low.

Robusta coffee for September delivery climbed $17, or 0.7 percent, to $2,331 per metric ton on the Liffe exchange. Prices dropped 5.9 percent this week, the first decline in four weeks. Robusta beans are used to make instant coffee and espresso.

Coffee has climbed 22 percent in the past year, trailing a 45 percent rise of the UBS Bloomberg CMCI Index of 26 commodities, Bloomberg reported. (ewd)

Domestic coffee consumption
2006: 150,000 tons
2007: 160,000 tons
2008: 170,000 tons

Domestic coffee plantation area (hectares)
2007: 1,279,220
2008: 1,295,237

Imported coffee
2006: 10,000 tons
2007: 20,000 tons

Source: http://old.thejakartapost.com/detailbusiness.asp?fileid=20080714.L01&irec=0

Ed. Despite high fuel prices, due to increased production output from Brazil, Honduras, Indonesia, Kenya, Costa Rica etc., I see coffee prices declining over the next year.

The Doka Estate Coffee Farm Enjoys a High Altitude Near the Poas Volcano.

Coffee has been a large part of Costa Rica’s economy and history. In fact Costa Rica’s first shipment of coffee transcended borders to Colombia in 1820 and it was in 1854 that Costa Rica took on the daunting task of cutting out the exporting middle man and transporting the “grain of gold” to Europe on her own. It was even coffee taxes that financed one of Costa Rica’s greatest architectural treasures, including the National Theater located in the nation’s capital city of San Jose. It is after 188 years of successful coffee production that global warming threatens to change it all.

Costa Rica has always been home to a welcoming and ideal climate and environment when it comes to coffee production. The soils of the tropical oasis are ideal for the distribution of the coffee’s root system, since they are enriched with volcanic ash and contain a degree of slight tropical acidity. The soil also retains humidity and facilitates oxygenation resulting in the growth of some of the world’s best coffee. Even the country’s strikingly beautiful mountain region has dedicated itself to this famed agricultural bread winner.

In altitudes ranging anywhere from 3,280 to 5,580 feet above sea level over 70% of Costa Rica’s coffee is produced in the mountain region. Temperatures there are ranging anywhere from 63 to 73 degrees Fahrenheit and prove to be ideal for coffee production. The rainfall in the mountainous area is also ideal and the sunlight is stable, however, all of these successful variables are threatened as global warming changes our climate world wide.

Recently in Uganda a United Nations study discovered that the area of land suitable for coffee production would have to be cut back drastically with even a mere increase of temperature. The climate change could also bring other discouraging obstacles for coffee farmers in Costa Rica other than temperature alterations.

Unusually colder temperatures as well as dry spells at unseasonable times can put coffee growing at lower elevations at risk. The warmer weather brought on by global warming can also put the prized plants at risk of insects that thrive in warmer weather.

Patricia Ramirez, an acclaimed scientist working for the Central American Integration System believes that “increases in the frequency of dry cycles that reduce the effect of cold on plants could favor the proliferation of fungus like the leaf rust coffee fungus.” The disease attacks young fruit and buds as well as leaves making a healthy coffee bean nearly impossible. A similar strand of rust infected Brazil’s coffee crop in 1970 creating a devastating decline in coffee production in the region.

Some of the alleged effects of global warming are already doing damage around the world. Guatemala experienced strong gusts of wind that unexpectedly damaged production this year and Brazil even experienced a severe drought that damaged crops and reduced yields as well. However, the changes in climate are not coming as all bad news for all local farmers in Costa Rica.

The rising temperatures are actually presenting Costa Rican coffee farmers with preferred alternatives. Specialty roasters, such as Starbucks and other high dollar coffee enterprises, prefer hard-bean Arabica coffee that can only be found at high altitudes.

An Agronomist for the Coopedota Coffee Cooperative, Daniel Urena, said that coffee plants have usually not survived above 5,906 feet, however, now that the temperature has increased, mountainous land that had once been far too cold and inhospitable for one of Costa Rica’s finest agricultural gems, has now become the prime Costa Rica Real Estate for coffee growing.

It is predicted, according to the United Nations, that due to human emissions of greenhouse gases the earth’s surface temperature could rise anywhere between 1.8 and 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 100 years. Costa Rica is already seeing the difference since farmers can now plant at 6,562 feet. “We didn’t plant there before,” Urena said.

Although the effects seem to have a positive influence in the Costa Rican coffee industry, farmers and growers around the world should still be precautious when it comes to the ever-changing climate. It is advised that growers increase the number of shade trees in coffee fields to protect the valuable fruit from both stronger than usual rains and winds. If we can ban together globally to help prevent global warming and counteract the changes we are already seeing daily, we might be able to preserve the world and the climate as we know it. In the meantime it’s crucial that we educate the public about these changes and methods to help reduce and counteract them.

Source: http://www.costaricapages.com/blog/costa-rica-news/global-warming-coffee/1112

COFFEE FLOURISHES in the island nation of the Dominican Republic due to a number of environmental factors, including altitude, latitude, rainfall and soil. Combine this with a strong tradition of coffee and you have near-perfect growing conditions.
“We have the right soil, the correct latitude, plenty of farms with good altitude, a strong labor force with a tradition in raising coffee, and the right balance of rain and sunshine,” says Bill Eichner, who co-owns Café Alta Gracia, a farm in the Dominican Republic, with author Julia Alverez.
Despite all of the things the Dominican Republic has going for it, the country’s coffee, which is often sold under the name Santo Domingo, has a mixed reputation.
“The not-so-nice reputation is that of a low-grade bean with some body, good for mixing of common coffees,” Eichner says. “More complimentary or discerning folks mention [the coffee’s] medium acidity, great aroma and full body with rich earthy tones.”
Santo Domingo is categorized as Caribbean coffee along with Puerto Rican and Jamaican coffee. Typically, Puerto Rican and Jamaican coffees have a better reputation, but that may have more to do with processing than it does with coffee quality.
“It’s probably not due to the basic qualities of the coffees being different, but rather to the care given in processing for export,” says Eichner. “Without question, coffee has been badly handled in the Dominican Republic. Having a low spot on the market scale has perpetuated the lack of care in processing. A local monopoly for purchase of coffee in the country hasn’t helped the price for producers, and therefore also contributes to the vicious cycle of low quality yields low price.”
Yet, most people will agree that when Santo Domingo is properly processed, it is a rich, acidic coffee with classic Caribbean characteristics. The country’s high-grown coffees tend to be richer and more acidic, while lower-grown coffees tend toward the softer, less acidic side.

 

Cultivation

 

It is estimated that 100 percent of Dominican coffee is arabica, with nearly 90 percent of that being of the typica varietal. Other varietals include caturra, bourbon, catuai and neuvo mondo.
Coffee farms in the Dominican Republican are mostly small—less than eight acres—and are spread throughout the country’s six growing regions. Dominican specialty coffee is almost exclusively organically grown. An increasing number of farms have received organic certification by international organizations. The majority of it is also shade-grown, often under a canopy of native pine, macadamia and guava trees.
Nearly every step, from growing to processing, is environmentally friendly. Wastes from the milling process are turned into compost to fertilize the plants, while pests and diseases are kept in check by careful pruning. In addition, mulch is laid down around the trees to prevent soil erosion.
“Most coffee grown in the Dominican Republic comes from small holdings or somewhat larger agribusiness operations,” says Eichner. “In the past decade a few growers have made the commitment to produce sustainable coffee (organic and shade-grown) and strive for the quality that will open up new markets. They have already proven that Dominican coffee can compete with its Caribbean neighbors for quality. Now we just need to find our way in a new market level.”
Depending on the altitude, the harvest usually begins in October or November and runs through June. Typically, coffee is picked by hand, just a little bit at a time, through the long growing season. Then the coffees for the specialty market are most commonly wet processed within a day of being picked and patio-dried.

 

Climate

 

The Dominican Republic offers a climate that is unique to other coffee-growing regions throughout the Americas. First off, there is no rainy season. Instead, rain falls nearly year-round. This rain, along with warm ocean currents and gentle trade winds, creates a long growing season. Thus, cherries are able to ripen slowly, insuring consistent and high-quality beans. The range of high altitudes allows numerous series of flowerings, which means that coffee is produced nearly 12 months of the year.
Much of Santo Domingo’s taste characteristics come from the country’s lofty valleys and four mountain ranges, each of which produces its own microclimate. In addition, the soil of the mountains is unusual; three of the four ranges are primarily limestone, while the last is granite. Specialty coffee is grown in terraced slopes along the mountains, with the best beans growing at 3,500 feet and above.
“Dominican coffee is unique because it has a wide variety of microclimates producing seven flowerings per plant each year,” says Miguel Melo, an exporter with Americo Melo & Co. “This creates a well-balanced coffee.”
To better showcase those microclimates, several decades ago, the government established six official coffee-growing regions in the country: Cibao, Bani, Azua, Ocoa, Barahona and Juncalito. Each region creates beans with distinct physical and chemical characteristics.
One problem with this otherwise idyllic setting is the frequent hurricanes. The Dominican Republic lies in the middle of the hurricane belt, and so is subject to severe storms, occasional flooding and periodic droughts. In September of 1998, Hurricane Georges caused damaged to nearly 70 percent of the country, including a number of growing regions. Los Dajaos, a farming community located in the central mountain range, was one of the areas most strongly hit.
To help combat this devastation, government and aid groups have stepped in. Still, Melo says, the aid has not been enough to combat “the economical woes of farmers from which they have not yet recovered and the lack of public investment in the rural areas where coffee is grown.”

 

Future

 

Despite the hardships, the future of Dominican coffee doesn’t look as dark as it did in years past. With the demand for organic, shade-grown coffees steadily increasing, the Dominican Republic has a commodity that is likely to sell, as long as the quality is there.
CODOCAFE, a Dominican organization that regulates and governs coffee politics, is working hard to increase the quality of Dominican coffee and to promote it well. CODOCAFE also recently signed an agreement with AFD, a French Development Agency, to further promote Santo Domingo.
Farms such as Eichner’s are taking a personal interest in improving quality and are working to increase the knowledge levels of growers.
“We have to teach farmers how coffee should taste to compete in the specialty market, as well as the importance of reducing defects,” says Eichner. “We decided to start at ground zero, teaching the children, and adults who are willing, in our community to read and write. At the same time, our new partners in farm management are turning our farm into a “green center,” a demonstration farm to teach diversity and sustainability in the community.”
With the coffee quality rising, Santo Domingo’s mixed reputation may soon be a thing of the past.
“Dominican coffee was traditionally mismanaged internally and as a result penalized in the U.S.,” says Melo. “However with our membership in the Specialty Coffee Association of America and our participation in their events, the perception of Dominican coffee has been changing steadily for the best.”

Source: http://www.roastmagazine.com/roasting101/origins_dominicanrep/navigating.html

Ever since a forward-thinking trio of physicists identified the phenomenon known as self-organized criticality—a mechanism by which complexity arises in nature—scientists have been applying its concepts to everything from economics to avalanches.

An Azteca ant tending green coffee scale.

Now, researchers at the University of Michigan and the University of Toledo have shown that clusters of ant nests on a coffee farm in Mexico also adhere to the model. Their work, which has implications for controlling coffee pests, appears in the Jan. 24 issue of the journal Nature.

The basic idea of self-organized criticality often is illustrated with a sand pile. As you trickle sand onto the cone-shaped pile, the cone grows and grows until it reaches a “state of criticality” where it stops growing. Add more sand, and the grains just slide down the sides in mini-avalanches.

“What physicists have done—both mathematically and physically—is look at how many grains of sand actually fall with each avalanche,” said John Vandermeer, the Margaret Davis Collegiate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and one of the Nature paper’s authors. “What they find is that most avalanches involve one or two sand grains, and relatively few avalanches involve hundreds of sand grains.” Such a pattern—with small versions of a phenomenon being more common than big ones—characterizes what’s known as a power law, a sort of fingerprint of systems that exhibit self-organized criticality.

What do avalanches have to do with ants” Vandermeer and co-author Ivette Perfecto, a professor at the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment, have been studying ants and other associated insects in a 45-hectare (111-acre) plot on an organic coffee farm in southwestern Mexico for three years and wondered whether the spatial distribution patterns they observed could be explained through the concept of criticality. With Stacy Philpott, then a U-M graduate student and now an assistant professor of ecology at the University of Toledo, they set out to examine the system in detail.

The ants, Azteca instabilis, have a natural history like that of many other ants. A queen establishes a colony in a tree, and once the colony reaches a certain size it splits and a satellite nest is established in a neighboring tree. Over time, you’d expect the ants to spread to every tree on the farm, but that’s not the case.

“The ants only occupy about three percent of the trees,” Vandermeer said. “But once you find them, you find them in clumps.”

How to explain the clumpiness?

“Normally when you have an animal or plant that’s distributed in patches like that, you tend to think that there’s some kind of underlying habitat variable that’s responsible,” Vandermeer said. But on the coffee farm, the habitat is about as uniform as a habitat can be, as trees are deliberately planted in a grid pattern. So the non-uniform distribution of ant colonies must be due to something other than habitat—something inherent in the biology of the ants.

Combining computer modeling with field observations, the researchers came up with a scenario that explains the spatial patterns as a case of criticality.

As the ant colonies spread from tree to tree, local clusters develop, but the clusters don’t expand indefinitely, all because of another insect with a sinister name: the decapitating fly. The parasitic fly lays its egg on the thorax of an ant; the egg hatches and the fly larva migrates into the ant’s head capsule where it feasts on the contents. Then the ant’s head falls off and the new adult fly emerges. Unfortunately for the ants, the bigger their clusters, the easier it is for the flies to find their colonies.

“So it’s the fly that maintains the ants’ spatial distribution,” Perfecto said. Looking at the frequencies of various sizes of clumps, the researchers found the telltale power law relationship, the hallmark of criticality.

Their understanding of the system has implications for controlling coffee pests, such as green coffee scale (Coccus viridis), a flat, featureless insect that lives on coffee bushes. On some bushes, Azteca ants protect the scale insects from predators and parasites and in return collect honeydew, a sweet, sticky liquid the scale secretes.

One of the green coffee scale’s mortal enemies is a beetle whose adult and larval forms both feed on it. “When an adult beetle comes to eat the scale insects, the ants vigorously defend the scales against attack,” Vandermeer said. “So within these clusters, the beetle can’t eat its prey.” The adult beetle, that is. The larval beetles evade the ants with waxy secretions on their backs that gum up the ants’ mouthparts.

Not only are beetle larvae able to polish off plenty of green coffee scale, they also get an inadvertent assist from the ants. In the course of shooing off parasitic wasps that attack scale, the ants also scare away bugs that parasitize beetle larvae.

“So we have a situation where the beetle is the main predator of the scale insects, which are pests on the coffee, and that beetle would go extinct if not for the patchy distribution of ants, because the larvae can only survive with the ants, and the adults can only survive without them,” Vandermeer said. “The farmers see the ants protecting the scale insects and want to eliminate them. But what we’ve discovered is that the ant, by forming these clusters, is a key component to maintaining the main scale insect predator in the system.”

The researchers received funding from the National Science Foundation.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080123131744.htm

In the little mountain town of Jarabacoa,22 kilometers west of La Vega in the country’s fertile Cibao region, Alisandro Rodríguez is turning the Dominican coffee industry on its head.

Long known for exporting bulk coffee at average prices, Rodríguez is one of a growing number of coffee producers who want to make Dominican coffee famous for quality rather than quantity - in much the same way Dominican cigars are now regarded as among the finest in the world.

Rodríguez is president of Agricafe, a specialty coffee exporter established by himself and six other investors in November 2003. Agricafe occupies a plant previously owned by Café Serrano, which had been the Dominican Republic’s top exporter of quality coffee until that company’s closure in 1999.

“This year, we’re exporting 20 containers, the same as last year, but when it was Café Serrano, they were exporting 250 containers,” he said. “The problem is we need more working capital.”

Quality, however, doesn’t seem to be a problem. Rodríguez claims that the chairman of a large specialty coffee association has said that “Dominican coffee is much better than Jamaica’s Blue Mountain” - which retails for upwards of $90 a pound in Tokyo.

No surprise, then, that Agricafe won a gold medal in the washed Arabica category during the recent Grand Crus de Café competition in Paris.

For more than 265 years, coffee has been part of Dominican culture, with per-capita consumption now at around 3.0 kilograms per year. Coffee is cultivated in four mountain ranges: the Cordillera Septentrional; the Cordillera Central (with the country’s highest mountain, Pico Duarte, at 3,175 meters above sea level); the Sierra de Bahoruco and the Sierra de Neyba.

Kelly Peltier, a Colorado-based coffee consultant who spent four years in the Dominican Republic, says Dominican coffee is generally overlooked.

“Some good coffees come out of the Dominican Republic, but they’re mainly sold to the commercial and premium markets,” she said. “Their biggest barrier right now is in marketing and promotion, getting it into the hands of people who can help promote it as a specialty coffee.”

Peltier said Dominican coffees are particularly sought after for espresso blends because of its mild, soft flavor. “The Japanese love Dominican coffee because it’s from the Caribbean and it’s something that goes well in their flavor profile,” she said.

In contrast to Central America, there are almost no volcanic soils in these mountain ranges. As a consequence, the Dominican Republic produces unique drinking and cupping characteristics. In fact, only the Cordillera Central is of granite origin. The other ranges contain a calcium substrate, which is a very rare distinction in the world of coffee and which provides this coffee with a particular taste.

Average rainfall is 1,800 to 2,200 millimeters a year, while coffee grows at altitudes of 300 to 1,500 meters above sea level. Virtually 100% of the country’s coffee production is washed Arabica; 90% of planted areas consist of typica with shade, and little or no use of chemical products, with the remaining 10% consisting of caturra with regulated shade or no shade in the highest areas.

The Dominican coffee harvest begins in August or September at lower altitudes in the southern half of the country, and continues until May or June at higher altitudes in the north. The great variety of altitudes and numerous flowerings permits production of Dominican coffee almost year-round.

Before the devastation wrought by Hurricane Georges in September 1998, the country was producing around one million quintales (around 45,000 metric tons or 757,000 60-kg bags) a year. Since then, production has dropped by 30%. Rodríguez says that between 200,000 and 300,000 Dominicans work in the coffee industry, down from 700,000 in years past. Around 60,000 of them are growers, of whom 80% cultivate less than three hectares apiece. Traditional plantations yield on average 500 pounds per hectare, while more sophisticated plantations yield up to 6,000 pounds per hectare.

Alisandro Rodriguez of Argicafe S.A. conducts a cupping session at his plant in Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic.

“Coffee is important in this country not only because of the revenues produced by the industry, but also the people, culture and communities that live from the plantations,” said Rodríguez.

Café Serrano used to export semi-roasted coffee to Puerto Rico. Last year, the island bought 100,000 quintales of bulk coffee from the Dominican Republic, nearly all of it from Industrial Banilejas (Induban), makers of Café Santo Domingo.

“The Puerto Rican market is for semi-roasted coffee, not green coffee,” he said. “At this moment, only Café Santo Domingo is reaching that market.”

Most Dominican producers process their coffee themselves, in small wet mills called “beneficios humedos.” All coffee is wet-processed, cherries are depulped fresh (within 24 hours), naturally fermented, washed and pre-dried in the sun. Coffee beans are then transported to large dry mills where the coffee is prepared for export or for sale in the domestic market. Only a few lots are singled out to be selected by hand.

The Dominican Specialty Coffee Association (known by its Spanish acronym, Adocafes) was formed in 2001. Adocafes has 10 charter members and two honorary members. Its main objectives are to promote Dominican specialty and organic coffees and to establish technical guidelines.

Another organization is the Consejo Dominicano del Café (known by its Spanish acronym Codocafe), a government entity responsible for enforcing the nation’s coffee policy, with the voting participation of producers, exporters and roasters. This agency oversees quality control prior to export, ensuring that no unqualified coffee is shipped out of the country.

In January 2003, Codocafe inaugurated a five-year, 17 million-euro project funded by the French government. In Spanish or English, its title is a mouthful: Proyecto de Mejoramiento de la Calidad del Café Dominicano y Promoción de Cafés Especiales (project to improve the quality of Dominican coffee and promotion of specialty coffees).

The project’s director, Pedro Alcides Morel, works closely with a French technical expert, Jean-Emmanuel Jourde. He says 54% of its funding consists of credits and the other 46% goes to technical assistance, administration, training and investigation.

“Like all countries, we understand that we have to improve,” Morel said. “Dominican coffee has a high potential for quality. We’re in the Caribbean, which gives us certain possibilities. This project tries to develop an image for Dominican coffee.”

Codocafe employs 175 technicians at the farm level, and also operates Finca La Cumbre, a training school for the coffee industry located in Santiago de los Caballeros, the nation’s second-largest city.

Morel said his agency is also trying to develop coffee tourism, a niche market that has been successfully been exploited by other countries including Jamaica and Costa Rica.

According to Morel, annual Dominican coffee production has dropped from around 1.2 million quintales to 700,000 quintales. Exports generate annual revenues of approximately $50 million, though that figure is difficult to verify.

“In the last few years, it has declined a lot,” he said. “Production has been very low, and with world coffee prices so depressed, the local market has become much more interesting than in the past.”

He said that at one time, the Dominican Republic boasted 15 to 20 coffee exporters; these days, fewer than 10 Dominican companies export coffee beans.

One of them is Karoma Estate Coffee S.A., based in the town of Lagunas.

Begoña Ahm, owner of the family-run business, started Karoma in 1992 and began exporting two years ago. Currently, she exports between 2,000 and 2,250 bags of green coffee beans a year to Europe - all of them produced at her 200-hectare farm.

Ahm says her biggest client is Sweden’s Gevalia, which retails her coffee online for $14.95 per pound.

“Prices have improved because now everybody wants coffee. Exporters want high-quality coffee to export, and local companies need coffee for the local market,” she said, noting that around 80% of Dominican coffee stays in the country - translating into the seventh-highest level of internal demand among the world’s coffee-producing countries.

“Even though the amount of production is less, people who are still convinced they want to stay in coffee are trying to improve their quality so they can get more money out of it,” she said. “This is also one of the ideas behind the French project: to help producers who want to stay in business.”

That makes sense to Eddie Ramírez, administrator of Belarminio Ramírez e Híjos in Jarabacoa. He says the company is exporting around 20 containers a year, mainly to Italy and Japan.

“Our volume isn’t that much,” he said, noting that the company employs 350 people and each year sells about $350,000 worth of coffee beans grown at 800 to 1,500 meters above sea level. “We have no plans to increase production, only to maintain the current level of production and find better markets that will pay for high-quality beans.”

Source: http://www.teaandcoffee.net/0904/coffee.htm

 

The lead story in the Economist this week is about Zimbabwe, about how its economy has descended into chaos, how gangs are rampaging through the country and how production of crops and goods is at levels not seen since before WW2. These stories can be shocking, but for us in North America they are distant from our daily lives and do not affect us directly.

However it is surprising how complex and big, global issues can hit you at the local level. A few weeks ago, while buying a coffee in a warming hut at the top of Blue Mountain, a minor ski hill overlooking the small town of Collingwood Ontario, I noticed signs describing it as Ashanti Coffee. TreeHugger loves supporting local green initiatives, and looking it up I found that:

Coffee consumers are being urged to “think before they drink” as a film accusing the industry of not giving producers a fair deal opens in the UK.

Coffee growers can be subject to a ‘volatile’ market price

The documentary film Black Gold says farmers in the developing world are typically paid around 60p for 1lb of coffee, forcing them to remain poor.

National Coffee Day, which is supported by fair-trade coffee firms and campaigners, aims to raise awareness.

The big coffee multinationals deny they are exploiting coffee growers.

Black Gold, which is about Ethiopian coffee producers, won praise after being screened at film festivals last year.

It was made by Nick and Marc Francis, two brothers from Brighton, who wanted to show how some farmers lost out in global trading.

Marc said some farmers were “struggling to eat” and the film aimed to demonstrate that they needed to be paid a fair price for their produce.

The brothers said they hoped people would support the awareness day on Friday.

‘Consumer lifestyle’

“We wanted to make a film which forced us as Western consumers to question some of our basic assumptions about our consumer lifestyle,” they said in a statement.

The film claims that coffee growers typically receive less than half of what they need to afford schools and basic health care.

We buy to the market price and we have to do that because we are a business that operates in the market Jonathan Horrell Kraft

Jonathan Horrell, director of corporate affairs at Kraft, which owns Kenco coffee, one of the biggest coffee roasters and importers in the UK told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Black Gold was “an important and powerful film” that raised important issues.

He said main problems were that farmers did not always get the full market price and that the market price for coffee had been “volatile in recent years”, dropping down to 45 cents for 1lb in 2001.

 

“We buy to the market price and we have to do that because we are a business that operates in the market,” he said.

He added: “It’s very important that farmers have access to the proper market price and also it’s important for all parts of the coffee industry that there’s some stability in the market that enables people to make a return.”

Helen Ireland, from coffee brand Cafe Direct, said the film highlighted the “impacts of the unfair trading system” that were happening all over the world.

“You can create a trading and business model that has a fair system across the supply chain and gives that stability to farmers who are guaranteed a fair price.”

She said Cafe Direct had taken this “one stage further” with growers who owned the company and who received investment and training.

“It’s seen as a commodity, but at the end of the day there are people behind that coffee and we’ve shown, if you look at a different way of trading - and we trade directly with the growers - there is a way that benefits everyone and gets the quality to the consumer.”

Source:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6733125.stm