Nicaragua growers open sustainable coffee conference
Date: 11-Nov-02
Country: NICARAGUA
Author: Ivan Castro
Some 400 producers from Nicaragua, Latin America's poorest country after Haiti, and other regions that have been hard hit by the coffee price crisis, attended the conference in Managua to learn about specialty markets, which pay more for higher quality beans.
"The idea is to teach growers in Nicaragua about the new opportunities in markets if they work on sustainability," Henry Hueck, the vice-president of Nicaragua's Specialty Coffee Association, told Reuters in the Nicaraguan capital.
Global prices for arabica coffee, the kind produced in Nicaragua, have bounced back in recent months from levels as low as 45 cents a pound at this time last year, but they still barely meet costs of production for most growers.
Prices in New York, where arabica is traded, were near 70 cents a pound last week. The cost of production in Mexico and Central America is between 70-90 cents a pound.
Specialty coffees, which most growers aspire to produce, fetch prices well above the "C" market, as the New York exchange is called. But the fussy market, by its nature, is difficult to break into.
The Managua conference, sponsored by producers, exporters and coop organizations, is meant to help promote the nation's beans as much as to educate growers on how to produce sustainable coffee.
Sustainable coffee is grown according to environmental and social standards, among other characteristics.
Nicaraguan coffee producers need just about all the help they can get.
Most of Nicaragua's 30,000 or so growers operate small and medium-scale farms, many of which have been abandoned in the price crisis.
About 30,000 full-time coffee workers have lost their jobs since the crisis began in 1999 and at least 21 people, 11 of them children, have died from hunger and malnutrition this year.