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Quality Beans Revive Guatemala's
Coffee Industry
When a global glut drove the
price of coffee beans to a
historic low five years ago,
Julio Flores almost shuttered
the hillside coffee farm that
had been in his family for four
generations. But today Flores's
farm is prospering as soaring
demand for premium coffee brings
new wealth to the old fields of
Central America.
"We fought and fought and
focused on higher quality, and
we have left the crisis behind
us," said Flores, 49, wearing
jeans and a straw hat as he
walked around his leafy,
seven-foot-tall coffee plants
with beans ripening for a
December harvest.
Flores said what saved his farm
was a clearer understanding that
First World consumers want only
the best beans in their
cappuccinos and lattes and that
they are willing to pay for it.
So he stopped using chemical
fertilizers and pesticides,
planted avocados below the
4,500-foot elevation that is
generally required for the best
beans and tended more carefully
to his mile-high coffee plants.
Now, instead of selling 100
pounds of beans for $42 as he
did in 2000, he is raking in
$115 for the same amount of
higher quality beans. Better
still, he said, if he is
certified as an organic grower
next year as he expects, he aims
to earn $150 to $200.
"A revolution has taken place in
five years," said William
Hempstead, a director of the
Guatemalan National Coffee
Association, which has been
helping farmers increase quality
to further distance themselves
from such mass producers of
commercial grade coffee as
Vietnam.
Industry analysts said the
shake-out in the coffee industry
has caused pain across the
region, resulting in the loss of
at least half a million jobs.
The industry now employs about
1.2 million people in Central
America, down from about 1.7
million five years ago,
according to official labor
statistics. Guatemala lost
250,000 of its 650,000
coffee-industry jobs.
Unemployed coffee workers have
moved to already overburdened
cities, and others have gone
illegally to the United States
looking for work. Families who
have depended on coffee for
generations have been displaced,
and countless coffee farms have
been abandoned.
But Hempstead and others said
that rather than dying, the
industry is now bouncing back
with a greater emphasis on
top-quality coffee. While that
has not restored the industry to
its former glory, it has brought
rare good economic news to this
impoverished region.
Analysts said the shift to
high-end coffee had been
supported by the United States
government, which sees it as an
opportunity to improve economic
stability in its back yard.
Conservation groups also are
working with farmers to help
them earn more money so that
coffee farms survive, because
they help the environment by
preventing erosion and harboring
wildlife.
Large U.S. coffee corporations,
Central American governments,
U.S. aid agencies and
international conservation
groups are working together to
help the industry, said Charles
Oberbeck, who is in charge of
the region's coffee programs for
the U.S. Agency for
International Development.
"The unlikely bedfellows," he
said, may all be working for
differing reasons, but the
effect is clear: Guatemala's
coffee export earnings rose from
$233 million two years ago to
over $300 million this year. A
similar rebound is occurring in
neighboring Costa Rica, El
Salvador, Nicaragua and
Honduras, which all depend on
coffee production.
"The crisis taught us that
quality sells," said Henry Hueck,
a Nicaraguan coffee farmer who
sells his coffee to Bewley's
Ltd., based in Ireland. "It used
to be a given that people bought
your coffee. Now all people are
talking about is quality
coffee."
Oberbeck said U.S. coffee
companies are paying
above-market prices to secure
the world's best coffee because
"they don't want to kill the
goose that laid the golden egg."
Cuba denies entry of anti-Cuban
Spanish politician
Cuba has denied entry
of a Spanish member of
parliament as he was holding
fraudulent travel documents,
said the Cuban Foreign Ministry
on Saturday.
Jorge Moragas, deputy of the
Popular Party (PP) and "a rival
of the Cuban Revolution,"
arrived Saturday night in Havana
and was immediately sent back to
Paris by the Cuban immigration
authorities, the ministry said.
Moragas was accompanied by two
Dutch parliament members and two
representatives of
non-governmental organizations,
all anti-Cuban activists, said
the ministry.
It said Moragas' trip to Havana
with the task of "supporting and
giving solidarity" to Cuban
dissidents and other activities
represent "a flagrant violation
of our sovereignty."
"It was a rude political
provocation against Cuba," the
ministry said, noting that this
is the second time that Moragas
has traveled to Havana to meet
and offer financial support to
the "mercenaries."
"Our patience has limits and we
won't abstain from responding to
interventionist actions and
provocation from enemies who, at
the service of the United
States, intend to alter the
internal order of the country,"
the ministry said.
Spain immediately summoned Cuban
ambassador Isabel Allende to
protest Havana's deportation of
Moragas. The Dutch government
also expressed outrage after the
two Dutch deputies were
deported.
International observers to
monitor Ecuadorian elections
A total of 58 international
observers from 17 countries will
be deployed to guarantee the
transparency of Sunday's
municipal and provincial
elections in Ecuador.
The observers will also assess
the efficiency of a pilot
project for electronic ballot
boxes, said the office of the
Organization of American States
on Saturday.
Some 8.6 million Ecuadorians are
registered to vote for 22
provincial prefects, 219 mayors,
893 town councilors and 3,970
rural-community councilors.
The observers come from
Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil,
Chile, Colombia, Paraguay, Peru,
Uruguay, Venezuela, Costa Rica,
Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua,
Canada, United States, Spain and
Japan.
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