Global warming to damage coffee industry

Radio Australia - News

April 12, 2007, 03:05:52

Global warming poses a threat to future world coffee crops with rising temperatures and drought likely to force some producers to seek higher and cooler land.

Licht's International Coffee Report says global warming is going to present the world's coffee growers with a big challenge.

It notes a United Nations Environment Program research project in Uganda which says a rise in temperatures of about two degrees Celsius will mean a dramatic reduction in the coffee growing area .

In India's Coorg coffee region, rising temperatures and reduced rainfall will reduce the number of bees to fertilize the trees and increase the threat from a destructive pests.

[This is was orginally published on April 12, 2007 by Radio Australia
http://www.abc.net.au/ra/news/stories/s1894933.htm]

Coffee By the Bucket Better for Blood Pressure than By the Cup

By Neil Osterweil, Senior Associate Editor, MedPage Today

Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

MedPage Today Action Points

* Explain to patients that this longitudinal cohort study suggested that women drinking a lot of coffee may have a lower risk of hypertension than more abstemious women.

* Point out that the investigators suggested that the effects are small and patients who are normotensive, men or women, should not worry about coffee drinking.

UTRECHT, The Netherlands, March 23 -- Coffee for women, and its effect on their blood pressure, is an exception to the maxim that moderation in all things is a good approach to life, contend researchers here.

Women who drink coffee by the pot full for a long time had a lower relative risk of hypertension than did women who indulged in one to three daily cups, Cuno S.P.M. Uiterwaal, M.D., of the University Medical Center, Utrecht, and colleagues, reported in the March issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

The effect on blood pressure of a lot of coffee did not hold for men, the investigators found in their longitudinal cohort study. But both men and women who abstained from coffee had a lower relative risk of hypertension than light coffee drinkers.

"The most important merit of our study is the elucidation of the role of coffee intake through its relation with hypertension in increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease," they wrote.

"Although there are reports claiming coffee to be hazardous, the larger cohorts show no association between coffee intake and cardiovascular morbidity or mortality or with the prognosis of myocardial infarction," they added.

They concluded that the effect of coffee on hypertension risk as it relates to cardiovascular disease may be immeasurably small.

"A practical implication from our findings would therefore be to abstain from professional advice concerning coffee intake in normotensive individuals, which indeed agrees with the latest clinical guidelines on hypertension," they wrote. "We cannot preclude that associations between coffee intake and cardiovascular outcomes are different among hypertensive individuals."

The investigators looked at the relationship between blood pressure and coffee consumption in 2,985 men and 3,383 women who took part in two general population studies of risk factors for chronic diseases.

The patients, with a mean age of 40 at study entry, had baseline visits during which they filled out detailed questionnaires on medical history, lifestyle habits, and diet, including coffee consumption.

The participants were asked how many cups of coffee per day they drank, type of coffee (regular, decaf or other), and whether they added milk or sweeteners. The participants had follow-up visits at six and 11 years.

Hypertension was defined as a mean systolic blood pressure of 140 mm Hg or higher over both follow-up measurements, a mean diastolic of 90 mm Hg or higher over both follow-up measurements, or the use of antihypertensive medication at any follow-up.

The authors found that people who never drank coffee at all had a lower risk for hypertension than light coffee consumers -- those who drank between one and three cups daily. The adjusted odds ratio for coffee abstainers versus light drinkers was 0.54 (95% confidence interval, 0.31-0.92).

On the other end of the scale, women who drank more than six cups of coffee per day had a lower hypertension risk than women who drank between zero and three cups (adjusted odds ratio 0.67; 95% CI: 0.46-0.98).

Men who did not drink coffee also had a lower risk relative to those drank one to three cups daily (adjusted odds ratio 0.60 (95% CI, 0.24-1.49), but adjusted odds ratios for the other two consumption categories, four-to-six cups, and more than six cups daily, were close to 1.00 (1.08, 95% CI 0.79-1.47 and 1.03, 95% CI, 0.72-1.46, respectively).

The authors also found an association between age, hypertension, and coffee consumption. Men and women age 39 and over at baseline had 0.35 mm Hg lower systolic pressures for every cup of coffee they drank daily (95% CI: -0.59 to - 0.11mm Hg), and 0.11 mg Hg lower diastolic pressure (95% CI, -0.26 to -0.03 mm Hg) compared with younger participants, but the latter was not statistically significant.

Dr. Uiterwaal was the recipient of an unrestricted grant from the organization on Physiological Effects of Coffee in Paris. There were no other author conflicts of interest, they reported.

Primary source: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Source reference:

Uiterwaal CSPM et al. "Coffee intake and incidence of hypertension." Am J Clin Nutr 2007;85:718 -23.

This article was orginally published on March 23, 2007 by MedPageToday.com. You can visit them on http://www.MedPageToday.com

Benefits of a coffee grinder – the issue of oxidation

A great tasting cup of coffee is produced from whole coffee that's ground within a few minutes of brewing. The reason why coffee tastes so much better when it's just been through a coffee grinder, is that within two minutes, or so the experts claim, the coffee beans begin to oxidize, which is what changes the flavor. Most experts agree that the sooner you brew your coffee after you put it through a coffee grinder, the better your coffee will taste.

Is this the end of organic coffee?

Thanks to a recent hush-hush USDA ruling, your clean-conscience, fair-trade, organic latte may soon be a thing of the past.

By Samuel Fromartz

Apr. 03, 2007 | Enjoy your organic coffee now, while it's hot -- because it may not be around for long.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture quietly released a ruling that alarmed organic certifiers and groups who work with third-world farmers. The decision tightens organic certification requirements to such a degree that it could sharply curtail the ability of small grower co-ops to produce organic coffee -- not to mention organic bananas, cocoa, sugar and even spices. Kimberly Easson, director of strategic relationships for TransFair USA, the fair trade certification group, puts it bluntly: "This ruling could wipe out the organic coffee market in the U.S."

TransFair USA is not the only organization sounding the alarm. In the past week, I spoke with nonprofits, businesses and organic certifiers, all of whom are concerned that the USDA ruling will catastrophically raise costs for small-scale producers of organic goods and likely push them back into conventional commodity markets.

The USDA's controversial ruling hinges on methods of organic certification -- a process in which inspectors visit farms and walk through fields, review growing methods, and see what measures the farmer is taking to avoid pests and weeds. If the methods comply with regulations, the inspector then makes a recommendation to a certification agency; and if the farm is approved, it is certified for one year and granted permission to carry the organic label on its products. The USDA National Organic Program has overseen this process since 2002, when a patchwork of state organic standards were codified under a national regime.

Until now, however, there has been a special provision for "grower groups" that made certification practical for farmer cooperatives in the Third World, whose memberships can reach into the thousands. Because of the immense logistical demands of inspecting every farm in a large co-op, a compromise was reached: An organic inspector would randomly visit only a portion of the group's farms each year, usually 20 percent. The grower groups would then self-police the remainder through a manager who made sure they followed the rules. The following year, an inspector would return and visit another 20 percent of the farms. After five years, all farms would be inspected.

But in the ruling made public this month, the National Organic Program overturned that system, saying every farm in a grower group must now be visited and inspected annually -- as has been the practice in the United States -- rather than only a percentage.

"[The previous system] was a mechanism for the low-resource global south to afford organic certification," said Michael Sligh of Rural Advancement Foundation International USA. He has worked with farm groups in the global south for years and in the 1990s helped craft the U.S. organic regulations. His e-mail in box is now bulging with questions about the ruling from non-governmental organizations across the world. "We're literally talking about hundreds of thousands of farmers who will be affected," Sligh explained. The staggered inspection method has been crucial for, say, coffee grower unions in Ethiopia, which have upward of 80,000 members. It was used by organic tea and spice farmers in India, organic sugar co-ops in Brazil, and organic cocoa farmers in Costa Rica, who would otherwise not be able to ship certified organic products to wealthier countries in the Northern Hemisphere.

The new USDA certification ruling arose out of a case involving an unnamed Mexican grower group that failed to detect a farmer using a prohibited insecticide and prevent empty fertilizer bags being used for crop storage -- both of which violate USDA organic regulations. NOP blamed the problem on inadequate internal controls of the self-policing system and decided to ban the practice everywhere. "The ... use of an internal inspection system as a proxy for mandatory on-site inspections of each production unit by the certifying agent is not permitted," the NOP stated. The agency informed organic certifiers of these revised standards in January, and in March published the ruling on its Web site.

In conversations over the past week, certifiers told me they knew of instances where the co-op inspection system had broken down, but thought that the NOP had taken an extreme stand, ending the possibility of group certification and ignoring the constraints of low-income producers. A more measured response would have been to punish the errant grower groups and then launch a public review of the certification system. "We need to have open comment on this and have a dialogue; we need to take a step back and look at the whole thing," said Patty Vincent, coffee product and certification manager at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, an organic and fair trade coffee company. The goal of certification should be to ensure the integrity of the organic product -- so consumers know what they are buying. But Vincent and others believe that integrity can be achieved without sacrificing the economic livelihood of farmers and the viability of the product itself.

If the ruling is unchallenged, certification costs will rise precipitously for co-ops in developing countries. Lebi Perez, training coordinator for Organic Crop Improvement Association International, a U.S. certification group active in Mexico and Central and South America, explained that it currently takes about 20 to 30 days to certify a grower group. "You have to go to the community by car, bus, mule or on foot, and access is difficult during the rainy season, because a stream might swell and you can't get across," he said. In the best of times, inspectors visit four or five farms a day. (Perez said OCIA certifies about 300 grower groups in the region, which average about 400 members each -- or more than 100,000 farmers.)

"We think it will now take up to a year to certify an entire group -- that's our calculation," Perez explained. And because OCIA charges $150 to $270 per day of inspection, the farmers' financial burden will increase dramatically. For small coffee and cocoa growers who earn about $2,000 a year, that burden may become too heavy; to survive, some will be forced to drop organic certification.

Indeed, the only farms likely to afford the new inspection program will be large-scale plantations. As an illustration, consider the case of one co-op of Peruvian banana farmers, for whom the USDA ruling is especially ironic: The 1,500 growers formerly worked as tenants on a single plantation, but with agrarian reforms in the 1960s each family got a plot of the landlord's land. Had that plantation been maintained, it could have had one visit a year from an inspector. But because the property is now split among 1,500 families, inspectors will need to visit each farm on the land.

"Our cost is going to be at least double, because we're going to rise from 40 inspection days a year to more than 100," said Luis Monge, regional certification manager with Dole, which buys organic bananas from the Peruvian co-op. If the market does not cover the extra cost of certification, Dole has another option. Instead of reaching out to small, community-based grower groups, it could buy exclusively from larger banana plantations in Colombia, Ecuador and Honduras that can afford to pay for their own certification. "It will present an opportunity for larger farmers to get in business," Monge agreed. "But that's against the roots of organic agriculture, isn't it?"

In the end, though, even the rise of plantations may not be enough to keep certified organic coffee in American mugs. The U.S. market for the brew is growing 40 percent a year, but organic coffee -- unlike bananas -- is impractical to farm on a large scale. It's too labor-intensive, because the plants grow under a shade canopy on steep hills and must be harvested and weeded by hand. So farmers seeking higher income may make the switch to non-organic methods, tearing out native shade trees and relying on herbicides and pesticides to boost bean yields. Growers who can't afford to make that jump may continue to farm organically and forgo certification, selling at the lower conventional price and hoping for the best.

Either way it's a bitter cup. But if the USDA ruling remains unchallenged, it's what we'll all be drinking.

-- By Samuel Fromartz

originally published by Salon.com on April 3rd, 2007.

Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee

Mekonnen Leka, 78, takes a sip of his evening cup of coffee with
nearly 30 friends and neighbors who have gathered at his home
in Afeta, Ethiopia, February 13, 2007. As the elder, he gets the first cup.

(Wes Pope/Chicago Tribune/MCT)

by Colleen Mastony

Chicago Tribune (MCT)

2 April 2007

JIMMA, Ethiopia—Inside the coffee plant’s corrugated metal fence, men look more like mules as they lug 100-pound sacks of coffee on their backs.

But as midday nears, a heavenly scent wafts from the corner, where Ahmed Achoumeto, 25, pounds a pile of black coffee beans in preparation for the noontime break.

“I am terribly addicted. If I don’t get coffee, I can’t see properly,” he said, standing barefoot in the dirt, grinding the beans with a primitive 3-foot-long wooden pestle and a mortar made of a hollowed tree stump. “Almost everyone here is addicted.”

Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee. And in this caffeine-addled corner of the world, coffee is a blessing and a curse swirled together in a cup.

Amid the lush hills and misty valleys, peasants endure bleak conditions and back-breaking labor to bring the beans to the world market. While nearly every worker detests the process—the picking, sorting, washing, shelling and drying—they are also hopelessly hooked on the sweet and delicate flavor of the black elixir.

Here, comfort comes from the very thing that causes so much pain: the little brown bean.

People sip the brew morning, noon and night, calling together large groups of friends and neighbors, burning incense while they roast the raw beans, brewing the drink in a black pot with a narrow spout and serving it in small handle-less cups. This is not a quick cup of joe, but a coffee ceremony - a slow, sensual process that soothes aching bodies and revives minds.

“Coffee is the backbone of our country,” said Frew Demeke, 40, a former official at the Coffee and Tea Development Authority, as he sipped a steaming cup in a local restaurant. Ethiopia is among the poorest countries in the world. But as another patron, noted, “even the smallest coffee shop has an espresso machine and milk frother.”

The coffee plant—a woody perennial evergreen shrub that can grow to 12 feet—was first cultivated in this region of southern Ethiopia.

The Arabica strain, which today accounts for at least 75 percent of the world’s production, originated in these green, rolling hills.

A popular legend dating to as early as the 8th Century claims that a shepherd discovered the coffee buzz when he noticed his goats rearing and bleating. The goats had just eaten the leaves and berries of a nearby bush, and so the shepherd tried some berries too. Feeling a strange euphoria, the shepherd ran to a nearby monastery to share his great find.

Thus, a global obsession was born. The monks began chewing coffee beans before lengthy prayer sessions, and the custom spread throughout Christian Ethiopia. Coffee traveled along spice routes to Yemen, Turkey and Europe. Along the way, someone began brewing the beans to make a hot drink.

Today, the French call it cafe and the Italians calls it caffe. Whatever the language, the word for coffee points to its birthplace: the ancient region of Ethiopia called Kaffa, a highland area with rich soil and cool temperatures that make for the perfect conditions to grow Coffea arabica.

In the central square in Jimma, one of the largest cities in the Kaffa region, a 6-foot decorative coffee cistern dominates the central square. A huge panoramic mural shows a woman picking coffee among the hillsides.

This is a breathtakingly beautiful place of low-hanging clouds and deep green hills. Groves of eucalyptus and banana trees line the winding roadsides. White trumpet flowers bloom around every corner. Baboons and black-and-white colobus monkeys frolic in the forests. Outside of town, coffee plants blanket the hillsides, growing under the shady canopy of acacia trees.

Little has changed over the centuries. People still live in mud huts, bathe in open streams and transport coffee on the backs of donkeys. And while people here don’t have much—there is no running water, and electricity arrived only recently—they do have coffee. Lots of coffee.

The plant accounts for more than 50 percent of Ethiopia’s exports, 95 percent of which is grown by small farmers. About 700,000 households are dependent on coffee, and another 15 million are partly dependent on coffee for their livelihoods, according to Oxfam, the British-based charity, which has worked to increase living standards for coffee workers around the globe.

On small family-owned farms, every hand is needed in the coffee harvest, which means that children as young as 4 years old will pick coffee with their families. The place is so tied to the little beans, that when coffee prices rise on the world market, thatched roofs on the mud huts here begin to disappear, as people can afford to replace their roofs with tin.

Every morning, just after sunrise, people walk the rough dirt roads toward the coffee processing plants—long, rustic buildings with corrugated metal roofs.

Inside, large shelling machines roar and belch clouds of dust. Dozens of women and girls—some as young as 12 years old—use large white pans to sift the beans, throwing them in the air in a continuous rhythmic action that fills the room with a shh-shh-shh sound like one hundred maracas shaking in unison. Dozens more crouch on the ground picking impurities from the beans. And every few minutes a barefoot man drags another bag of beans inside for processing. Outside, piles of coffee beans are spread on the ground to dry in the sun.

It is dreary, monotonous, exhausting work. But amid the burlap sacks and the rattling of beans, coffee peasants dream of a better life. Asegedch Malutu, 20—a beautiful woman crouched on a thin plastic mat to sort the beans—fantasizes about working in a shop. “Anything but this,” she said. Etensh Sisay, 16, a tall girl with big eyes, said she is so tired when she goes home, she immediately falls to sleep. When she closes her eyes, she said, she dreams of coffee.

Most of the factory workers are girls and women. Boys go to school, and men work in the fields. Aynalem Bekele, 14, in a Calvin Klein T-shirt and a bandanna around her head, sometimes wishes she were a boy because, she said, “they are free.”

The grueling process leaves the workers with little more than aching backs, stiff joints and—if they are lucky—$1.50 a day in wages. At the end of the day, the workers shuffle out of the factories and back to their houses. They gather together around the fire to take their share of comfort from the coffee.

In a rustic one-story house, with dirt floors, earthen walls and a papaya tree outside the door, nearly 30 friends and neighbors gather for their evening cup. Mekonnen Leka, 78, the half-blind and elderly homeowner, sits on a wooden stool, waiting for his daughter to make the coffee. “The smell, the taste, the feeling it gives you,” he said of the drink. “When we come home tired, it makes us strong.”

His daughter, Elfenesh Mekonnen, 33, tends a small charcoal fire in the center of the room. She roasts the green coffee beans on a metal pan until they turn dark and oily. The charcoal glows red and gives off a soft light. Smoke fills the room, which feels warm and cozy. On benches along the walls, people chat and take in the aroma.

She pours each cup with flourish, not spilling a drop. The first cup goes to Leka, the eldest in the room.

Everyone in the room watches as Leka brings the small cup to pursed lips. He blows on the coffee. And then he takes a sip. His whole body seems to relax. He smacks his lips and then smiles.

“Very good,” he says.

PERCOLATING MOMENTS

A.D. 850: Legend says, an Arab goat herder notices his goats acting strangely. He tastes berries of an evergreen bush where the goats feed and experiences the first official “coffee buzz.”

1600: Coffee spreads across Europe. In England, by the late 1600s, coffee supplants alcohol as a favorite breakfast drink.

1688: The largest insurer in the world, Lloyd’s of London, begins life as a coffeehouse.

1730: The British introduce coffee to Jamaica, where today one of the most expensive coffees in the world is grown in the Blue Mountains.

1800s: Coffee cultivation spreads to South and Central America and Hawaii.

1900: Luigi Bezzera invents espresso, introducing a pressure process that reduces brewing time. He calls his new machine the “Fast Coffee Machine.

1908: Invention of the world’s first drip coffeemaker.

1950s: Instant coffee is “perfected.”

1971: Starbucks opens, and within three decades the trendy coffee shops become a worldwide phenomenon.

Sources: World Book Encyclopedia, International Coffee Organization, and “Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World,” by Mark Pendergrast

Fair-Trade Certified vs. Sustainable Coffee

March 30, 2007

JENNIFER McMULLEN

SILHOUETTE STAFF

McMaster’s University Student Newspaper

Hamilton, ON Canada

Squeeze and roll. Seems simple enough, doesn’t it? For Paul Kind, this isn’t exactly true. He is the inventor of the rim roller, a device specifically used for rolling up the rim on coffee cups.

“Paul is a problem solver,” said his wife Iona. “We would go to [Tim Horton’s] every Tuesday and struggle to roll up our rims. The first thing in his mind was that there has to be a better way. He was trying to make a living and in his spare time he would put his mind to that, physically making 12 different prototypes. It went on and on for 3 years; it’s been a long process to make it the right size and shape. I’m really hoping this works well for him because he’s worked hard for so many years.”

To some, the idea of having a device to roll up the rim for you seemed a little bit ridiculous. When asked if he would be buying a rim roller, third-year theatre and film studies student Tyler Shearer replied, “Absolutely not. Why do I have to pay for a product when I can just use my thumbs?”

Other students, such as fourth-year sociology student Jenn Mosselman and third-year English student Heather Cairnie, said that they might purchase one as a stocking stuffer or a gag gift. Mosselman added that it was “hilariously intelligent that they’re making money off of a contest that people love. But it just goes to show you that our society isn’t about need, it’s about want.”

Alexa Di Cresce, a third-year theatre and film studies major, remarked, “Inventions are about novelty rather than making things better. Why not make something that matters?”

In defence of the product, Iona Kind said, “To each their own. We can’t twist anyone’s arm to buy it. Elderly people love it because it’s tough for some people if they have arthritis or other things that limit their abilities. [I’ve] received an inspiring e-mail from a lady that had taken the gadget to work and given it to a man that had one arm. Remarkably he’s able to do it himself now. Then you’ve got the people that bite the tabs and rip them off. This is way more sanitary. It’s all a matter of perspective.”

Essentially, the choice to buy into it all is up to the consumer. Some students don’t even bother purchasing Tim Horton’s coffee because they don’t practice fair trade—they use what the company refers to as a “coffee sustainability program.” According to the Tim Horton’s website “under the coffee sustainability program, small coffee producers are being provided with technical support and training to help them increase the amount and quality of coffee they produce. Our own coffee experts also travel to the growing farms to ensure that proper conditions exist for both the coffee and the workers. While we certainly agree in principle with the aims and goals of Fair Trade coffee, our dilemma is that the growers who belong to the Fair Trade ‘Certified Co-ops’ cannot supply either the volume or the quality of beans that our chain requires for our special blend. The fair trade program requires certification on behalf of the farmers, which is an expense they cannot usually afford. Plus it provides a price that has no relation to the quality of the coffee. ”

When asked to comment further on the program’s accountability and monitoring system, a Tim Horton’s representative said, “The information available on the website was all that we can share at this time.”

In defense of Fair Trade Coffee, Chantal Havard from TransFair Canada, a non-profit organization dedicated to fair trade practices, said, “Specific to fair trade is a guaranteed minimum price, social premiums and long-term relations, direct contact and environmental and worker standards. There is a mechanism of monitoring involved.”

“No one knows how these other programs work. It is true that producers pay certification fees, but to make sure producers aren’t disadvantaged, Fair Trade Labelling Organizations has created a fund so that farmers can get first year certification fees waived. And it isn’t a loan, it’s a grant,” added Havard.

To further clear up the issue of Fair Trade versus Coffee Sustainability programs, Sandy McAlpine, president of the Coffee Association of Canada explained the difference between the two. With the coffee sustainability program, he said, there are “direct linkages made rather than through a certification system. They go to source countries and set up direct support relationships in order to get control over working with their suppliers. So the trade-off is more controlled; there is no third party involved.”

When asked where he thinks students should be buying their coffee from in order to be socially conscious, McAlpine replied, “With where the market is [right now], you accomplish the same thing when buying from either. One is doing about as much good as the other.”

To some, the idea of having a device to roll up the rim for you seemed a little bit ridiculous. When asked if he would be buying a rim roller, third-year theatre and film studies student Tyler Shearer replied, “Absolutely not. Why do I have to pay for a product when I can just use my thumbs?”

Size Matters In Lower East Side Coffee; (Or: The Starbucks Effect--Beware)

By Mark Wellborn

Friday March 30, 2007

Starbucks seems to have left another local coffee house in its wake. Earlier this week, The Bean Coffee and Tea, located at 118 Orchard Street on the Lower East Side, closed its doors after being in operation just four months.

While it seems the demise of the caffeine outpost, which also has a location in the East Village, could easily be attributed to the Starbucks that sits just feet away, Bean manager Guy Pujlia blamed the size of the store.

"The space was just too small," Mr. Pujlia told The Real Estate. "People would get tired of waiting in line and just go down the street to Starbucks."

Rumors have been floating around the neighborhood recently that Ini Ani, another local coffee shop, might also be falling the way of The Bean Coffee and Tea. However, an employee at the Stanton Street store, notable for the corrugated cardboard that covers its walls, confirmed that this was indeed a rumor. Long live the independent coffee house! For now.

- Mark Wellborn

Organic coffee a unique success story

by Uma Sudhir, AP/NDTV.com

Friday, March 30, 2007 (Araku Valley)

Tribal women from remote hills of Andhra Pradesh have wowed the world not with their dance or striking nose-rings but with their coffee.

For instance, Gemmile Tikku, a widow from Araku Valley in Andhra Pradesh's Visakhapatnam district, has won national and international recognition for growing one of the best flavours of organic coffee.

However, for them to take the international market by storm, these women will need adequate support.

Coffee grower Appa Rao informs that with NGO help for better farm practices and marketing, he grows coffee that fetches him a better price and his income has more than doubled in the last couple of years.

"I used to get Rs 35-40, now I get above Rs 80-100," said Appa Rao, Coffee grower.

Brown revolution

Some 60,000 tribal families are part of this brown revolution.

They grow up to 4000 tonnes of organic coffee that has a premium niche market in the developed world.

In fact, this invigorating story has had such an impact that it drew the Union Commerce Minister to Gemmile Tikku's doorstep.

"One acre of coffee can fetch up to Rs 13,000 an year. From 75000 acres to 1.5 lakh acres, we plan to double area under coffee here in the next five years," said Jairam Ramesh, Union Minister of State, Commerce.

Spicing this steamy success is black pepper that is grown as a creeper along with coffee and is adding to the income.

The next step is organic certification and standardization of the coffee so that the Araku Valley organic coffee can emerge as a strong international brand.

Fair trade is improving coffee farmers' lives

By Matthew Burrows

March 1, 2007

French president Jacques Chirac has already pronounced him a Knight of the French Legion of Honour.

Dutch-born Catholic priest Francisco VanderHoff has worked for 27 years promoting fair trade as a tool of “empowerment” for the indigenous coffee farmers of his adopted Oaxaca state in southern Mexico. And in 2005, while receiving his award from Chirac in Paris, the ebullient Vander?Hoff came close to convincing British prime minister Tony Blair to make his home “totally fair trade”.

“Chirac I would call a courageous politician,” VanderHoff told the Georgia Straight over espresso in a Kitsilano coffee shop. “He has ways of adopting his more left-wing beliefs into his right-wing framework. He said fair trade was ‘urgent and necessary' in front of [then–UN secretary general] Kofi Annan. Tony Blair is more tricky, very tricky. I asked when he will make 10 Downing Street fair trade and he smiled and said, ‘It's very complicated.'?”

VanderHoff, 67, was only in Vancouver for 24 hours following a stint as keynote speaker at the Ethical Purchasing Forum at the University of Victoria on February 23 and 24. According to B.C. Co-operative Association spokesperson Michael Zelmer, who accompanied him on the trip, he can pass on a lot of wisdom with little fanfare.

“He's not formal at all, but he's very sharp,” Zelmer told the Straight by phone. “I just found out he's writing a book with Nobel Prize winners and economists Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz. I'm quite impressed with how plainspoken and grounded he is, all things considered.”

In Oaxaca, VanderHoff participated in the 1983 official launch of UCIRI (Unión de Comunidades Indígenas de la Región del Istmo), a coffee producer cooperative created to pool resources and to bypass traders—often called “coyotes” or “intermediaries” by VanderHoff. (He is also responsible for launching the first fair-trade label, Max Havelaar, in collaboration with Dutch advocate Nico Roozen.)

“I don't feel miserable but feel instead very free and very happy,” VanderHoff explained. “Fair trade gives you a different perception of what an economy is all about. When I started this, our farmers were living off US$1 a day, and that is truly miserable. But now they are at US$2 a day, while the state minimum is US$4, so that is still poverty. But it is a 100-percent increase.”

VanderHoff also claims the cooperative model he has developed has enabled his community to sustain itself while developing health care, a guaranteed food and water supply, and education. He said he still lives on US$2 a day.

In 2003, North Shore resident Lloyd Bernhardt cofounded the Vancouver-based Ethical Bean Coffee Company with his wife, Kim Schachte. He told the Straight he spent some time talking to VanderHoff and felt it was important for local coffee connoisseurs to start making the connection to the farmers.

“What fair trade essentially does is get rid of a lot of people who don't supply value,” Bernhardt said. “It's tough work [for the farmers], who are typically in a co-op, each member with his own family farm of one to two hectares, while a group will get together and share a mill where they do the harvesting [from November to March]. It's lots of work and it encourages cooperation because individual farmers cannot afford their own mills.”

Bernhardt said he was in the software business but spent four months in Guatemala when he and his wife adopted their seven-year-old daughter from that country. He began to make “instant connections” in his head while observing the Guatemalan coffee farmers.

“There are approximately 25 $4 double espressos in a pound of coffee,” he said. “That's $100 of product. As a wholesaler paying $40 a pound, that looks pretty good. It also looks good to a roaster.”

Until a few years ago, the farmer's share of that pound of coffee was US60 cents, Bernhardt said. Since that time, a minimum of US$1.46 has been installed to help the farmers avoid the vagaries of price fluctuations and to get them a fair price. It also proves that, as Zelmer and VanderHoff believe, there is flexibility along the chain to help farmers at no extra cost to the consumer.

“Of the local coffee sold in Vancouver and Canada as a whole, we're probably talking about one to two percent being fair trade,” Bernhardt said. “Look at Starbucks and the institutional side; most of that is not fair trade. Starbucks has one product line, and another that is organic. Otherwise, they sell all that [non-fair-trade] coffee, so that's not a whole lot. But we are growing and we have to make sure that we do it in a way that is sustainable.”

Originally published in The Georgia Straight Vancouver Ontario, Canada. March 1, 2007.

Scientist develops caffeinated doughnuts

DURHAM. N.C. - That cup of coffee just not getting it done anymore? How about a Buzz Donut or a Buzzed Bagel? That's what Doctor Robert Bohannon, a Durham, North Carolina, molecular scientist, has come up with. Bohannon says he's developed a way to add caffeine to baked goods, without the bitter taste of caffeine. Each piece of pastry is the equivalent of about two cups of coffee.

While the products is no on the market yet, Bohannon has approached some heavyweight companies, including Krispy Creme, Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks about carrying it.

Illegal plantations linked to major coffee firms

By Chris Mercer

1/19/2007- Some of the world’s largest coffee firms have been unwittingly sourcing beans from illegal plantations inside one of the world’s most important wildlife sanctuaries, a new report says.

Coffee industry giants Nestle and Kraft Foods were both implicated in the report, published by the World Wildlife Fund, which says growers in Indonesia had illegally used 45,000 hectares of the country’s Bukit Barisan Selatan (BBS) National Park.

The news threatens to be another public relations nightmare for top coffee firms amid ongoing criticism of their supply chain practices. The BBS park is an important refuge for endangered tigers, rhinos and elephants.

WWF said most of the coffee firms involved were unaware of the problem due to a lack of planting regulations in the region.

But it criticised both importers and exporters for not having mechanisms in place to prevent the trade of illegal beans. The group estimated from satellite images, interviews and tracking that 19,600 tonnes of beans were produced illegally every year.

“If this trend of illegally clearing park land for coffee isn’t halted, the rhinos and tigers will be locally extinct in less than a decade,” said Heather Sohl, of WWF UK.

Colleague Nazir Foead, of WWF Indonesia, said: “WWF doesn’t want to shut down the coffee industry in Lampung Province.

“But we're asking multinational coffee companies to implement rigorous chain-of-custody controls to ensure that they are no longer buying illegally grown coffee, and we're asking the Indonesian Government to better protect the park."

Nestle sought to distance itself from the illegal beans on Friday. “We share the concerns of the WWF and we are in talks with them. It is an industry-wide issue,” a spokesperson told BeverageDaily.com.

“It’s true that sometimes determining its source can be problematic, but we would never [knowingly] buy illegally grown coffee.” The group sources less than five per cent of its coffee from Indonesia and 60 per cent of that comes direct from farmers.

Kraft Foods was unavailable for comment.

Indonesia is the world’s second largest exporter of Robusta coffee beans, many of which are grown next door to the BBS park, in Sumatra.

Two cups of coffee may ward of post-workout soreness

Originally Posted on : 2007-01-11 | Author : Paula Cussons

Earthtimes.org

The downside of exercising is often sore muscles, which discourages people from having a really good workout. But now researchers from the University of Georgia may have found a way to bypass this as a new study suggests that drinking moderate amounts of coffee after exercising could help overcome this soreness.

These findings hold relevance to people who are new to workouts as they are the ones who experience the most soreness. “If you can use caffeine to reduce the pain, it may make it easier to transition from that first week into a much longer exercise program,” said lead researcher Victor Maridakis.

The study involved nine female college students who were not regular coffee drinkers. These students were not regular to exercise either. The researchers allowed them to have moderate workouts for the first two days before beginning the experiment.

The students were randomly given either caffeine or a placebo after a regular workout session. Thereafter they were asked to do a couple of thigh muscle exercises, which required a maximum stretching effect on the thigh.

Those who drank caffeine one hour before the second exercise had a 48 percent reduction in soreness as compared to those who took a placebo, the researchers reported. Co-author Patrick O'Connor said that it was likely that caffeine blocked the adenosine receptor, which is a byproduct of inflammation.

However the study is very small and since it involved only young females, the results are not deemed conclusive. "It can reduce pain," Maridakis agreed, "but you have to apply some common sense and not go overboard."

The details of the study will appear in the February issue of The Journal of Pain.

Print Source :

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/19134.html

Is Starbucks the Victim of a Coffee Mugging by Oxfam?

I am re-posting this very controversial article originally published on "Seeking Alpha" on December 27, 2006. I think this is one of the better articles on this subject. I particularly like the balanced perspective acheived through the posted comments adjoining the article.

David Phillips (10Q Detective) submits: Oxfam, a development charity that dates back to World War II, alleges that global coffee retailer Starbucks Corp. (SBUX) is depriving Ethiopian coffee farmers of between $88.0 to $132.0 million a year, by opposing the Ethiopian government's efforts to trademark three popular varieties of its specialty coffee—Harar, Sidamo and Yirgacheffe beans.

Oxfam and its broad coalition of supporters say:

More than a year ago, Ethiopia approached Starbucks and asked the company to lead the coffee industry by example and sign an agreement recognizing Ethiopia's legal ownership of its fine coffee names. If companies like Starbucks signed such agreements, Ethiopia would occupy a stronger negotiating position with foreign buyers, capture a larger share of the market associated with its coffee names, and better protect its brands.

Oxfam and its activists allege that there is a huge disparity in the profit distribution to the players in the coffee industry, with Ethiopian coffee farmers often collecting no more than 10 percent of the profits from the sale of their coffees. The rest goes to the coffee industry players that can control the retail price—the international importers, distributors, and roasters like Starbucks.

Starbucks CEO Jim Donald met with Ethiopiaian government officials to discuss trademark issues on November 29, 2006. Given little progress in their talks, Oxfam and its supporters organized “The Starbucks Day of Action” in more than a dozen countries, demonstrating outside many Starbucks stores on December 16, with activists leafleting and carrying the image of an Ethiopian coffee farmer on sandwich board fronts, with the backside reading, "For every cup of Ethiopian coffee Starbucks sells, Ethiopian farmer earn 3 cents. Tell Starbucks: Honor your commitments to coffee farmers." [Ed. note. Watch the video on YouTube now.]

Talks purportedly broke down because Starbucks favored a geographic certification model—much like Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee, Florida Orange Juice, and French and Napa Valley Wines—which guarantees a point of origin and standard of quality; whereas, Ethiopia refused, opting for brand ownership.

We laud Oxfam’s good intentions, but question their grasp of Ethiopia’s calculus for peculations.

The rhetoric behind economic development today—especially in African countries—is such that where poverty exists, you can be sure that “corruption” won’t be far behind. Aside from widespread allegations of fraud following the May 2005 parliamentary elections, in which results showed the incumbent Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front retaining a majority, the business environment—while not thought to be as corrupt as political life—in Ethiopia, still ranked only a 3.70 score (with 1.0 being the best & 5.0 being the worst) on an ”Index of Economic Freedom 2006” census taken by The Heritage Foundation/ Wall Street Journal:

Ethiopia's cumbersome bureaucracy deters investment…. Corruption in Ethiopia poses various problems for [the] business environment, as patronage networks are firmly entrenched and political clout is often used to gain economic prowess.

In our view, irrespective of going the certification process or the intellectual property route, in order for the coffee farmers to share in any incremental value—such as an increase in annual income—necessitates a transparent system that shows how the money is going back to the farmers.

In addition to failing to explain what type of transparent ‘checks and balances’ system need be established, nowhere in its press releases does Oxfam explain how the agency derived the incremental annual benefit to farmers of between $88.0 to $132.0 million.

To the contrary, since 2001, Starbucks has been inserting transparency into standard contracts. Today, the Company has economic transparency requirements for 59 percent of all coffee purchased to provide information on the payments made to farmers. This represents 177 million lbs. (80 million kg.) of coffee.

In December 22, 2006, Starbucks' Letter to the Editor of the Seattle Post Intelligencer (regarding the Ethiopian Trademark), Dub Hay, VP-Global Coffee Procurement said, too:

While our purchases of Ethiopian coffee represent a very small percentage of the country’s total coffee exports, we pay premium prices – in 2005 our price exceeded the New York commodity market price by 23 percent -- for all of the coffee we buy in 27 countries. And, between 2002 and 2006 we increased purchases of Ethiopian coffee by more than 400 percent and are committed to growing those purchases in the years to come.

In our view Oxfam and its supporters have not presented a cogent argument to suggest that Starbucks is acting in an unethical or socially irresponsible manner; nor has Oxfam presented any convincing evidence that Starbucks is willfully trying to maximize its own profit margins—by denying Ethiopian farmers their legitimate coffee profits.

Voir dire [Old French: “To speak the truth”] is a tool used to achieve the constitutional right to an impartial jury. Preliminary examination of Oxfam as an impartial juror would show that the aid agency is in an awkward position to comment on the social responsibility of Starbucks:

1. Language found in a Coffee (Rescue Plan) Policy paper [2002] speaks volumes:

Despite the stagnant consumer market, the coffee companies are laughing all the way to the bank…. Until now, rich consumer countries and the huge companies based in them responded to the crises [slump in coffee prices and economic impact on coffee farmers] with inexcusable complacency. In the face of human misery, there have been many words yet little action.

2. In 2004, Oxfam accepted a £100,000 investment by Starbucks into a rural coffee-growing project in Ethiopia and a range of expertise-sharing programs focusing on improving trading agreements for millions of coffee farmers in developing countries.

Given the weaknesses of Oxfam’s arguments and its lapses in credibility, Starbucks comes across less as a coffee-thirsty exploiter of less-developed countries, and more the victim of a coffee mugging.

Editor David J Phillips does not hold financial interests in any of the companies mentioned in this posting. The 10Q Detective has a Full Disclosure policy.

Seeking alpha December 27, 2006

Eugene Clough wrote on Wed Dec 27th @ 3:17 am

Hi,

Let's hear it for Starbucks.

abera mola wrote on Wed Dec 27th @ 8:31 am

Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee holds a trademark, you can check at uspto.org. Second, it is infact Starbucks' argument that makes no sense. It is completely devoid of economic reasoning and the company has chosen to argue its case by citing aid programs it participated in and sometimes even bordering on patronizing comments stating that the Ethiopians wouldn't know how to handle a trademark. 23% over the the New York commodity market for speciality coffees is a joke ... the New York commodity market prices are for bulk auctioned coffee (eg. the folgers blended brands that you find in grocery stores). The selling prices for the speciality coffees is in some cases between 100% - 500% [in some cases more] of what the folgers brands sell for. All Ethiopia is asking is that the prices its farmers get for the speciality coffees [not all its coffees] reflect these differences. The way it hopes to do that is through trademarking.

A most important element you are overlooking is that these coffee brands are the IPs of Ethiopian farmers not that of Sbux and they have a right to do what they will with it [regardless of Sbux sensitivities] ... plus impartiality would have required that you mention Sbux's attemot to trademark the name Sidamo as part of its application in 2004.

Greg Sherwin wrote on Wed Dec 27th @ 3:04 pm

Ahhhh, the answer is "no"?!?

Fair Trade was devised by people who wanted to counter the price squeeze of coffee farmers at the bottom of the chain while retailers profited handsomely with huge margins. Essentially, Starbucks was one of the reasons why Fair Trade coffee came about. Wisely, they saw the opportunity and co-opted it, and now boast their Fair Tradeness as a badge of honor -- in a little smoke and mirrors to deny their prior practices that lead to its creation. So Starbucks is hardly the victim here.

Same goes for the Oxfam case. While I certainly would question the transparency of Ethiopia and the hands over which revenues would flow in that country, it's a bit disingenous to suggest that Ethiopian growers don't deserve protections we afford other food & drink producers around the world because they happen to be unlucky enough to live under problematic government leadership.

I think the most culpable act that Starbucks did surround this was, first of all, denying that they were behind the National Coffee Associations' veto on the measure. And now they've come back front and center publicly stating they were against Ethiopian certification. Talk about speaking out of both corners of your mouth.

I wouldn't go so far as to suggest that Starbucks is some bloodthirsty exploitation machine, the way that Nike has been portrayed. However, like Disney, they profit handsomely from a Potemkin village of ethical propriety when behind the scenes they are no better -- or worse -- than any other profit-making corporation. So calling Starbucks the victim of a mugging is a bit falling for the bait. You should know better.

Feel and look fantastic in a coffee body wrap

Ladies, whether before or after Christmas, awaken your senses and treat your skin to a fabulous Bodycoffee anti-cellulite detoxifying body wrap at Mingala. It will tackle that dreaded cellulite and rid the body of the poisonous toxins many of us will be guzzling this party season!

The therapeutic Bodycoffee body wrap gets to work on cellulite and toxins as the clay, green coffee powder, and other healing ingredients provide maximum firming benefits while encouraging skin to eliminate damaging toxins.

How it works

Firstly sea algae activating serum is gently massaged into the person’s cellulitic areas. This serum contains fat-fighting caffeine and sea algae extract, which is an effective natural moisturiser that promotes the silky texture and smooth finish of younger-looking skin.

Next, spa-goers are wrapped in a detoxifying, coffee-infused cocoon. It is full of Bodycoffee green coffee and utane powder, which was first developed using Kaolin clay to stimulate circulation to the skin, gently exfoliate, and cleanse without drying.

Coffee powder from green coffee beans provides more concentrated antioxidant benefits than the roasted variet; it helps eliminate toxins and make skin look more toned. After this luxurious treatment, clients feel invigorated, with firmer skin, sleeker contours, and a healthy-looking glow.

Spa-goers are drawn to this innovative new way to energise their bodies and pamper their skin. After a Bodycoffee treatment, clients emerge radiant, refreshed, and positively glowing.

The coffee plant is acknowledged the world over for its healing properties. It is renowned for its abilities to mend broken skin, soothe irritations, and revitalise cells. The coffee plant is also a free radical scavenge; it neutralises destructive oxidation reactions, which are the culprit of everything from acne to eczema.

Coffee is also a gentle exfoliant, removing dirt and dead skin cells, opening pores so wastes and toxins can be easily released. This plant is also a great cleanser; it neutralises and absorbs strong odours.

Caffeine improves micro-cellular circulation and breaks up the fatty deposits that can cause cellulite. It is an effective astringent; with the same 4.5 pH as the skin, it helps to fend off acne and other blemishes. There is a UVA/UVB protector in the coffee plant, it helps to screen out the sun rays responsible for burning, premature ageing, and skin cancer.

Origins of Bodycoffee

The idea behind Bodycoffee products came from founder Stephanie Profitt and her partner Serge Kogan. Stephanie was inspired while on a traditional Russian bathhouse (known as the "Banya"). People there were using coffee in a way she had never seen before - rubbing it on their bodies as a stimulating exfoliant. It has been a tradition in Russian bathhouses for generations, and coffee also is a natural astringent, antioxidant, and deodorant. It cleanses, moisturises, and protects the skin from the dulling and damaging effects of environmental toxins, revealing a youthful, more radiant appearance.

In 2001, they set up their company Stephka, appointed a team of the best skin care experts, and together set out to combine the therapeutic benefits of coffee with other healing ingredients such as olive and hemp seed oils, shea butter, sea salt, and herbal extracts to create products that can be used every day to diminish the effects of oxidation, sunlight, and pollution. The result was Bodycoffee, a collection of body care products that revitalise tired, dull skin to reveal the soft, new self within.

Bodycoffee treatments are available at Mingala, Pearse Court, Pearse Street, Athlone. You can contact them on (090) 6477770.

Arabica coffee project a fantastic hope

VietNamNet Bridge – The project on developing Arabica coffee in Vietnam, which was kicked off eight years ago, is facing failure.

This is an ambitious project that aims to develop the Arabica coffee plantation area in 15 northern mountainous provinces, allowing Vietnam to export Arabica coffee to the world. The investment capital for the first phase of the project was VND800bil ($50mil), a part of which came from French AFD loans.

Wrong investment?

The 2005-2006 crop provided 18,000 tonnes of Arabica, and 11,000 tones were exported, down by 1,000 tonnes in comparison with the previous crop.

Nguyen Nam Hai, Director of Cafecontrol, said that the quality of Vietnam-grown Arabica was alarmingly bad, with the size of coffee beans becoming smaller and smaller.

“There are problems in picking and processing processes,” said Mr Hai.

As a result, a large proportion of product cannot be exported.

“Vietnam-made Arabica is just average quality in comparison with the world’s products. Though Vietnam has exported Arabica for the last eight years, Vietnam is still not a big name in the world,” said Mr Hai.

He thinks that the problem lies in the coffee seed. Catimor is the kind of seed, which is being planted widely in Vietnam; however, Catimor cannot bring good-quality products.

The height of the land for growing Arabica, according to experts, can decide the quality and taste of Arabica. Arabica coffee has been grown on land not high enough above sea level. It is more difficult to grow Arabica than Robusta, which is popular in the Central Highlands and southeastern areas.

The habit of Vietnamese farmers of picking ripe and unripe coffee beans at the same time has also been cited as one of the reasons behind the bad quality of Vietnam-made Arabica.

Hope still cherished

According to the Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association (Vicofa), the total area for growing Arabica in the 2005-2006 crop was 2,000 ha higher than the previous crop, about 20,500 ha, mostly in Lam Dong, Quang Tri, Son La and other northern provinces. Of these provinces, Lam Dong can provide 10,000 tones of Arabica every year, 50% of total Arabica output.

Under the development strategy drawn up by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the plantation area will be five times greater in the next five years than the current level, which will allow the industry to harvest 150-200,000 tones every year.

The area for growing Robusta will gradually decrease from 500,000 ha to 400,000 ha in the next five years. Doan Trieu Nhan, Vicofa Chairman, stressed that it was an effective solution to get sustainable development, while helping reduce the overproduction of Robusta.

In addition, according to Mr Nhan, Vietnamese producers and exporters will be able to earn more money with Arabica coffee. Arabica prices are always 1.5-2 times higher than Robusta in the international market, and Arabica has never seen overproduction as Robusta has.

However, it is not so easy to develop Arabica plantation area and exports. Nguyen Van An, Director of Thai Hoa Trading Company, the biggest Arabica exporter, said that farmers and processors have to change their habits of farming and processing. They also have to make investment in equipment and technologies suitable to processing Arabica, while they need advice from scientists on the areas for growing and other technical issues.

“Vietnam is a big Robusta exporter, and Vietnamese farmers have been growing Robusta for many years. However, this does not mean that they will be naturally successful in growing Arabica,” Mr. An said.

orginally posted 13 December 06 on vietnam.net