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The collapse of coffee prices on the international market has plunged the coffee sectors in Central America and Colombia into their worst crisis ever, says the United Nations. The U.N.'s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean says the coffee crisis is the result of excess world production, which has not been offset by increased consumption of this product. As a result, in the past few years, coffee stocks have increased significantly, depressing prices on world markets to the point of collapse, said the commission. The commission has produced two new reports on the region's coffee crisis. The first report, entitled "Central America: The Impact of Falling Coffee Prices," said that in 2001 world coffee production outran global consumption, which rose just 1 percent. The over-supply of around 10 million sacks of coffee and record export volumes (88.7 million sacks) have pushed importing countries' inventories up to around 25.5 million sacks, almost three times the level compatible with good prices. Similarly, the commission said, the "rather discouraging outlook" for the region's economy in 2001, characterized by weak external demand, particularly due to the economic slowdown in the United States, has not helped offset the coffee crisis. Low international prices caused significant losses in foreign-exchange earnings that affected countries' trade balances. The report follows the recent announcement by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) that it will launch a new two-year, $6-million Special Coffee Program to help coffee growers in Central America |
recover from the crisis. The program
was announced during an April 3 to 5 conference in Antigua, Guatemala,
co-sponsored by USAID, to discuss the region's coffee crisis.
The commission said coffee growing accounts for significant amounts of the gross domestic product (GDP) in Central America — 1.3 percent of the GDP in Costa Rica, 2.5 percent in El Salvador, 4.2 percent in Guatemala, 7.2 percent in Nicaragua, and 8.2 percent in Honduras. This means, the commission said, that the coffee crisis has had a significant impact on the economies in those countries and on a range of activities associated with coffee production. But the most serious effect of the coffee crisis was felt in producing areas. The financial condition of almost 300,000 of the region's coffee producers deteriorated and their access to new loans became severely limited in some countries. To reduce costs, producers reduced wages. Many farms were abandoned or neglected. The U.N. commission estimated that in 2001 some 170,000 jobs were lost, involving $140 million in wages that were not received. Unemployment in the coffee sector, combined with lower wages, affected some 1.6 million people in the region. The commission said that to overcome the region's coffee crisis, growers must produce specialty and alternative coffee products, or other crops. A second ECLAC report focused on the coffee crisis in Colombia. The report said social conditions in that country are extremely worrisome since more than 500,000 families depend on coffee production for their livelihoods and have suffered continual impoverishment during the last decade. The two reports are available in Spanish on the ECLAC web site at: www.eclac.org. |
A.M. Costa Rica photo
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In a daze
A former travel store and the bar known as Happy Daze are meeting
the wrecking crew on Calle 7 in the downtown. The Hotel Del
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| Lately I have been thinking about
book titles, not the contents of the books themselves, just their titles.
Like, "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues." That has been going through my head
for a couple of days. Then I thought about "War and Peace." Then up came
the title, "The Woman Who Made Love to Men to Take the War out of Them."
It was not until I discovered that I had assembled all of the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies on my kitchen counter that I realized that I was depressed. Even grown up ladies get the blues. Chocolate chip cookies, as well as spaghetti with garlicky tomato sauce are my usual defenses against the blues. As I beat the sugar and butter mixture, I thought about why I was feeling so down. The irritating wind that won’t quit wasn’t helping. I can’t hear it in most rooms of my apartment but I can in my "office." But mainly, I knew it was the news, the news from everywhere, including Costa Rica. In the local news was the sad information that the losing presidential candidate, Rolando Araya Monge, had been beaten up by a group of celebrators — not disgruntled losers, but happy victors of the opposing party! At the same time I read that there was a drive-by shooting in Sabanilla, a suburb of San Jose. "Paradise Lost," I thought. The peaceful, nonviolent beauty spot of the world that was once Costa Rica is disappearing. The news from the U.S. is even worse. The war on terrorism looks like it is going to expand into a world war. The powers that be know that Americans are poor readers, yet CNN now adds a moving scroll of news items different from what is being discussed and pictured. So we are expected to read one thing and absorb it as we watch and listen to something else. Enough to depress anyone, especially since the news in the crawl space is seldom mentioned above and is often more important. Some days ago I read in that crawl space that the testing of nuclear bombs in the 50s has resulted in some 50,000 cancers in the United |
States. I saw that item just once. Meanwhile, over and over I see information about all of our personal habits that can lead to cancer. More than once, moving across the bottom of the screen has seen the warning that women who gain more than 38 pounds during pregnancy are more prone to breast cancer. I think the government is just trying to shift the blame. One way or another the U.S. is becoming a "Cancer Ward." My cookies were in the oven by now. I wondered if perhaps as I bit into one (like half the world I eat several while they are still warm), it would jog my memory of happier times, like the little madeleine cake did for Marcel Proust. Hmm, that’s why I was thinking of "Remembrance of Things Past." Then immediately came to mind, "Nostalgia Isn’t What it Used to Be," and I realized that living in bygone days doesn’t work. We only have the present — "Be Here Now," as the title says. I took my cookies out of the oven, and as soon as I could handle one, took it with me out onto my balcony and looked out over the city I love that is increasingly getting more and more polluted, then at my pitiful plants. I must do something about them, I told myself for the 50th time. Then I thought of "Candide" and did think of the message there. Perhaps the answer to my blues over the woes of the world about which I seem to be able to do so little is to cultivate my own garden. Meanwhile I will go back into the kitchen (that is really my garden) and make a pot of beautiful red, spicy tomato sauce. It can’t hurt. More of Jo Stuart HERE! |
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