Devouring profit - International Coffee Organization

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get the daily coffee price from nearest main towns: Huixtla & Motozintla. With a price
of US$60.0/qq, to be paid to the farmers, if in a handful of parchment coffee there are
4 fermented or defective beans, the purchase price will be reduced to US$55 to 56/
qq. If there are 6 beans broken or damaged by CBB, the price will be US$56 to 57/qq.
Farmers claimed that some traders bias the scales in order to pay less money for the
same amount of coffee. It is believed that the intermediary can gain 2 or maybe 2.5 kg
per sack of 60 kg.
2.6 Colombia
Colombian coffee growers are facing many problems. As in other countries, the most
important is the low coffee price, which has been ruling the coffee market over recent
years, leading in 2002 to the lowest real price ever. Social conditions have also changed
because of the economic crisis leading to increased violence and insecurity. Despite
these circumstances the internal coffee market continues to operate well. Colombian
coffee farmers are in a fortunate minority of those who receive immediate payment
for their coffee at a transparent rate closely related to the international coffee price.
They achieve this because of the well established co-operative system and a sound
coffee institutional structure. However at the beginning of the project ICO/02 a survey
was carried out in order to determine the main problems faced by the Colombian
coffee producers. Figure 1 describes these problems.
Hence low coffee prices and CBB were the main problems and comprised 71% of the
total. Of the countries visited for this study, only in Colombia did CBB figure as a
principal problem. In the other countries it appeared more to be a symptom of other
structural problems which were weighing heavily on farmers.
In the Colombian case we can conclude that CBB was one of the most important
problems because the internal coffee market punishes the price if the level of damage
exceeds certain limit. The main consequence was a severe price reduction.
Figure 1. Main problems affecting IPM participatory research project farmers