Devouring profit - International Coffee Organization

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Because of inadequate training, we maintain that many researchers and extensionists
neither fully understand the economic and cultural limitations of farmers, nor the
shortcomings and costs of the techniques they are implementing. This severely limits
their capacity to advance a farmer-friendly IPM strategy. We have seen cases where
extensionists have drawn up more than a dozen actions that the farmers should take to
control CBB. Not surprisingly in such a case, farmers end up not adopting IPM because
they find it too difficult and costly and are unsure about its worth.
IPM, almost by definition, consists of a range of techniques. The problem is that some
are more effective than others, and some are easier to understand. Each element
needs to have coherence and be viably cost-effective, or if not, it has to be bundled
with another element so that the two can work synergistically.
6.3 How the local market affects
CBB management
A salient factor we found during the project was that most local coffee markets do not
reward for coffee quality. The exception is Colombia where internal coffee markets
are well organised and have a sound mechanism to analyse and reward for high quality
coffee and to penalise it when it is below standard. Table 26 summarises the factors
that we believe contribute to the determination of coffee price in the countries studied.
Table 26. Main factors intervening in price definition, = present.
Country Weight Quality
India X
Ecuador X
Honduras X
Guatemala X
Mexico X
Colombia
From Table 26 it is evident that the main criterion for price definition is coffee weight.
The only country where coffee is always bought by both weight and quality is Colombia.
We saw some evidence for quality evaluation in both India and Mexico but there
is no standard national system.
In the Colombian case the negative impact of CBB on quality is linearly reflected in a
price reduction. Hence the market plays a key role in promoting CBB control because
coffee farmers are fully aware of the economic benefits of controlling it. We believe
that when the local market lacks quality standards, coffee farmers are less inclined to
control CBB because of the lack of incentive. Table 27 is our estimation of the degree
of internal market development for the countries visited.