Devouring profit - International Coffee Organization

October 2002. The provisions of the scheme demand that an exporting member of
the ICO shall not export coffee that:
for arabica coffee, has in excess of 86 defects per 300g sample
for robusta coffee, has in excess of 150 defects per 300g
for both coffees, has below 8% and above 12.5% moisture content
Until now the emphasis has been on destruction of poor quality stored green coffee.
Here we suggest that another way to combat the problem should be to reward farmers
for producing good coffee, so that much less poor quality ever enters the coffee
chain. We believe this is a more sensible way to invest funds than paying for costly
storage, destruction of coffee after it has been processed and monitoring teams to
ensure this has been done.
We suggest that the coffee industry needs to examine the in-country links of the
coffee chain from a quality control viewpoint and this needs to be more than an
aspiration, it needs to be a logical system based on quality management according to
systems developed in other industries, for example the system and philosophy of J
Edwards Deming (Neave 1990).
The fragmentation of the coffee market and the consequent collapse of institutions
over the last few years make this task particularly difficult. But if the coffee industry is
serious about improving sales through quality, it needs to invest funds to solve the
problem of wasted coffee quality. Too much potentially good coffee is being spoilt
before it is exported because farmers lack the skills and incentive to produce the best
from their land. The liberalisation of world coffee markets has not improved the industry
as a whole. If the coffee industry believes in liberalisation, it must surely also
believe that this liberty comes with obligations to ensure a strong and plural coffee
supply.
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