Devouring profit - International Coffee Organization

100
robusta since both amount and distribution of rainfall throughout year are favourable
for this kind of coffee. There are estimated to be about 1,000 ha of new clonal
varieties in this region. In the other zones, with more seasonal rainfall, arabica prevails.
These are the western Pacific coastal zone (Manabí province), the southern states
(mainly Loja and El Oro), the central area (Esmeralda and Santo Domingo). In these
zones, all but 25,000 ha of arabica is traditionally grown (i.e. not intensive production),
with no more than 2,500 coffee trees per hectare, shade trees, little or no fertilization
and old trees. According to information collected during the project, Ecuadorian coffee
productivity ranges between 800 kg/ha of parchment coffee in the case of more intensively
grown crops and 700 kg in the traditional ones.
Millions of coffee bags (46 kg)
4.0
3.5
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0
1963/64 1994/95 1999/00 2000/01 2001/02
Coffee
Honduras
This is one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere, with a GNP per capita
income of US$660 33 . Agriculture is very important in Honduras with 70% of the population
linked to this sector. The main revenues come from exportation of bananas
though coffee, cattle, sugarcane, lumber, tobacco and seafood, are significant contributors
to the national income and foreign exchange.
Coffee production in Honduras has been expanding (Figure 22). At the beginning of
the 1960s, total production was about 500,000 sacks (46 kg of green coffee), by 1994/
1995 it was 2 million and during the year 1999/2000 the exports rose to about 3.7
Figure 22. Expansion of coffee production in Honduras over
the last 40 years.
million sacks. For the period 1985 - 1989 coffee exports were 25.6% of total exports
(Palma et al., 1997). Coffee exports were valued at US$174 million for the coffee year
1993/94; these figures demonstrate the key importance of the coffee sector to the
33 World Bank, 1996 figures.