Devouring profit - International Coffee Organization

export about 20,000 tonnes (something like 6.7% of total coffee exports) per annum
in the next few years. Organic coffee is also of increasing interest especially for coffee
grown on tribal land, which represents about 42% of the coffee area in India. Here
coffee is managed in a less intensive traditional way, which is close to organic production
guidelines (Central Coffee Research Institute, 2000). Some of the grades of specialty
coffee and value added coffee are Mysore nuggets EB, Monsooned Malabar (AA, PB,
C), Monsooned Arabica AA, Rob Kapi Royale.
The states of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu contribute 92% of Indian coffee grown
but also in small sectors of the states of Andhra Pradesh and Orissa and some of the
North Eastern states, coffee can also be found. In Andhra Pradesh at least, its is becoming
a significant crop to tribes who formerly practised ‘slash-and-burn’ agriculture.
Ecuador
At US$100 million per year in 1999 coffee was about third in importance in agricultural
exports of Ecuador, after fruit (mainly bananas) and shellfish and fourth in importance
of all exports. Hence coffee provides a significant contribution to export earnings of
this small and poor country. More importantly, the employment coffee traditionally
provides makes it a crop of strategic and social importance. Both coffee and cocoa
sustained pronounced falls for the period 1995-1998, whilst fruit and fish remained
relatively stable. Part of the decline may be attributed to the El Niño phenomenon in
1998, but it is clear that in the case of coffee the fall predates this event. From 1994
to 1999, coffee export earnings fell by a stunning 81%, though these figures may be
distorted somewhat by illegal movements of coffee to and from Colombia, depending
on the differential in internal prices between those two countries.
The 1983 national coffee census estimated that Ecuador had 460,000 ha of coffee but
now it is reckoned to be only 305,000 ha. This reduction is most likely caused by
abandonment of farms and changing to other crops as the world price of coffee has
deteriorated. In order to measure the precise area, a coffee census is currently being
carried out by INEC (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos). Of this area roughly
45% (137,000 ha) is planted to robusta coffee and 55% (168,000 ha) is arabica coffee.
Coffee distribution, by geographical zones, appears in the following Table 37.
The north-eastern zone of the country, corresponding to the Amazonian basin, is mainly
Table 37. Geographic zones and areas in coffee.
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