Devouring profit - International Coffee Organization

Colombia: “Authorities from the police and army confirmed that in the last
three years, as the coffee sector crisis deepened, the Departments of Caldas, Tolima,
Risaralda, Quindío and N Valle suffered a severe fracturing of public order. Robberies rose
by 90% in the last 3 years, kidnappings shot up and the insecurity on the highways
became generalised.” [El Tiempo, Colombia, December 2001]
Coffee is globally significant for development. As the most valuable product of the
tropics, for more than a century it has been a principal product of national economies
in many developing countries. Some rough calculations estimate that about 22 million
families live from coffee. Additionally, the coffee industry as a whole generates about
100 million jobs with 60% of them in the producer countries (Federación Nacional de
Cafeteros, 2001).
The coffee berry borer (CBB) is the most important coffee pest because of its worldwide
distribution (present now in all coffee-producing countries except Hawaii, Papua
New Guinea and Panama) and its cryptic lifestyle (Le Pelley, 1968). Hidden inside the
bean for most of its life, it causes direct loss of value to the product and is hard to
control by pesticide applications.
A problem such as CBB throws into high relief many of the issues caused by the
rapidly changing and globalising coffee industry. These include: the quest for higher
quality, health and environmental concerns about pesticide abuse, the applicability of
developed country concepts to solve developing country problems, the declining fortunes
of research/extension services and the difficulties of providing the rural poor
with new knowledge and techniques.
To understand the issues, we will first resume some relevant knowledge about CBB
and how it is presently controlled. We will then examine the problem in specific
countries from several sources including data collected through interaction with poor
smallholder farmers. From this we develop both an economic analysis of CBB and
then generate some hypotheses about the underlying forces involved. We end by
making recommendations to improve CBB control in the future.
1.1 The berry
borer problem
The female CBB perforates the berry and penetrates into the developing coffee bean.
She then starts to feed from the bean and the reproductive cycle commences, causing
very significant losses (Decazy, 1990). The degree of damage is complex to define
because the pest can cause at least three types of loss: premature drop of younger
berries, loss in weight and loss in quality (see Chapter 4).
CBB live almost exclusively in coffee berries. There are a few records of them attacking
other seeds, but alternative hosts are insignificant. Each female (2 mm long) will lay
30 or more eggs that take four to six weeks to mature to new adults. Siblings incestu-
13