|
INTERVIEW - Mexico farmers abandon coffee for forests
article courtesy of Planet Ark
UK: May 24, 2002 LONDON - Coffee farmers in one of Mexico's main
growing states, driven to desperation by rock-bottom prices, are
abandoning the crop to plant forests instead or even emigrating,
a senior farm official said yesterday. Marco Miguel Munoz, farm
trade commissioner of Veracruz state, said many farmers were now
emigrating to the United States, often illegally, in a desperate
search for work. "We are looking to diversify from coffee and the
best option is forestry," he told Reuters on the sidelines of a
meeting of the International Coffee Organisation (ICO), which brings
together producers and consumers. "If something is not done, we
think the coffee crisis will become a world security problem," he
added.
Mexico is the world's fifth largest coffee producer. Output from
Veracruz represents some 20 percent of Mexico's coffee area. Low
prices have slashed 65 percent from the value of Veracruz's coffee
exports this crop year, Munoz said. In the first five months of
the 2001/02 crop year, Veracruz's coffee exports were worth $105
million, sharply down from $307 million in the same year-ago period.
Munoz echoed remarks by Nestor Osorio, ICO's executive director,
who said last week that the situation in some countries was becoming
potentially explosive as the slump in prices battered farm incomes.
Osorio said that half a million jobs in Central America had been
lost as farmers could no longer cover their costs. Global coffee
prices have slumped by some 80 percent since a peak of $3.18 a lb
in 1997 and are now hovering at just over 50 cents a lb. Veracruz
aims to destroy a third of its coffee area to try to encourage farmers
to plant more remunerative alternatives, improve the environment
and the quality of beans. Mexico has been one of the key drivers
behind an ICO-backed global quality improvement programme, aimed
at destroying five percent of the lowest quality beans. "But this
is not enough, because of overproduction. We are going to keep having
surpluses and that will continue depressing prices," Munoz said.
Mexico is losing around 668,000 hectares of forest a year to agriculture
and urbanisation.
Veracruz has lost vast areas of forest, Munoz said. But for diversification
to have any lasting impact on coffee prices, it would need to be
carried out globally. Munoz said he was keen to present his idea
to Vietnam, the world's second biggest coffee producer and a relative
newcomer to the market, whose massive output increases had helped
to destabilise the supply/demand balance. WHO PAYS? Although the
latest idea from producers appears sound, getting it up and running
will cost money, and that is all too often a major cause of failure
for such schemes.
The Veracruz programme aimed to compensate farmers by paying them
between $500 and $1,000 per hectare of destroyed coffee area for
nine years - the time they estimate it will take for the forestry
project to start earning money, Munoz said. That compares with $200
per hectare which farmers were earning before the collapse of coffee
prices. Munoz said they would have access to some federal funds,
but would also approach international bodies such as the World Bank.
Story by Clare Black
|
