Coffee Crisis Steeps Farmers In Low Prices
And Consumers In Bad Coffee

. . . Congress Asks White House To Forge Solutions

WASHINGTON (Nov. 26) -- The Senate has joined the House in approving a resolution calling on the Bush Administration to work with other nations and with coffee buyers and producers to address a sharp decline in world coffee prices that is ravaging poor countries that depend on coffee sales, glutting the market with poor-quality coffee, and squeezing out production of higher-quality beans prized by consumers in the United States and other countries.

The Senate resolution, sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), passed the Senate on Nov. 20 as the congressional session was coming to an end.

“Coffee prices are at their lowest levels in decades.  So why does so much of the coffee you buy taste so bad?” asked The Wall Street Journal in a news article on Nov. 19, pointing out that high-quality coffee meanwhile is becoming scarce and expensive.  The answer, the article concludes, is that bad coffee is getting cheaper and good coffee rarer because farmers’ incomes are steeply down in countries that produce the highest-quality (arabica) beans.

The resolution, offered to focus attention on the crisis and its scope, cites a report by the World Bank that 600,000 Central American coffee workers have lost their jobs in the last two years alone.  The resolution urges U.S. leadership in developing a global strategy to respond to the coffee crisis.

Leahy, who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, said the crisis is beginning to forge common cause between non-governmental organizations concerned with the welfare of coffee workers in developing nations on the one hand, and the interests of consumers and specialty coffee companies in stabilizing the slide in coffee quality, on the other.

He spotlighted the leadership shown on this issue by a diverse group of private organizations, singling out the anti-poverty group Oxfam, and coffee roaster Green Mountain Coffee, a leader in Fair Trade practices that reward growers with better prices for more attention to quality.

“The price of coffee has fallen almost 70 percent over the last five years,” said Leahy.  “We are seeing the devastating impact that the collapse of world coffee prices is having on developing nations in Latin America, Africa and Asia.  This resolution is a call to action.  It is the first step toward working with the Administration, coffee producers and buyers, and non-governmental organizations to find solutions.”  He said he will continue to press the issue in next year’s congressional session.

Leahy’s Senate version of the resolution, S. Res. 368, was co-sponsored by Senators Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).  The Senate resolution is similar to a counterpart House resolution authored by Representatives Sam Farr (D-Calif.) and Benjamin Gilman (R-N.Y.), which passed the House of Representatives on Nov. 15.

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