Tuesday, May 28, 2002


excuse me, but i have to bore you just one last time. . .

it's the coffee politics again. long-time readers may recall that i have written before about the coffee situation in colombia. with world coffee prices still depressed, a civil war raging, and the economy stalled, some desperate colombian coffee farmers have turned to planting illegal drugs. once upon a time, growing colombia's superb coffee guaranteed a family middle to upper-middle class status. facing the loss of their dreams and family land, or under pressure from the rebels who basically demand that coffee farmers in the areas they control grow drugs, more and more farmers are in fact pulling up their beautiful old coffee trees and planting coca.

this last weekend, colombia elected a new president, alvaro uribe, himself from coffee country. and he has pledged to aid coffee farmers so they can stay in the coffee business. uribe plans to ask the u.s.a. to increase its aid. currently, we are involved in colombia only as part of the so-called "war on drugs," the drug interdiction effort; the large amounts of money we've sent were handily approved by congressional leaders at the time and the general policy is still widely supported. no matter how you feel about the success of that so far, it's clearly in everyone's interest to support coffee farmers in the coffee business.

uribe intends to ask for a lot more foreign aid from the u.s.a. during the last 2 years, we have already sent more than US$1.3 billion to colombia as part of the so-called "plan colombia." currently, congress is considering sending another US$35 million this year, and the bush administration has budgeted US$98 million for 2003 to help colombia protect a prominent oil pipeline. this will involve us much more deeply in the colombian civil war, which sadly involves things such as paramilitary death squads. . . .craziness we've all seen before.

frankly, it's my feeling that we should not get so involved in this effort, unless uribe can shut down the alleged death squads. our experience in central america in the 80s is not a pleasant chapter in our history (let's not even mention iran-contra); and we may be on the path to repeating it in colombia unless we wise up. however, i do think it wise to increase aid temporarily to colombia's coffee farmers to allow them to weather the current price depression. this could mean trade assistance, or favored access to our markets; perhaps there are more creative means than simply handing out cash for uribe to use as agricultural subsidies.

the point here is not discuss arcane bits of foreign policy. the point is to note that the coffee price depression is a serious problem with many ramifications for consumers. it's causing problems all throughout the americas and africa. while these troubles seem far from home, remote, distant, outside our daily lives, i want to show you that actually we are paying for them in very real ways: tax dollars for foreign aid, increased illegal immigration, more drugs on our streets. cheap coffee is proving very expensive!

the solution is to overhaul the coffee market, to get specialty coffees off the commodity rollercoaster, or to restructure the global coffee sector in some way. i don't have an advanced degree in economics. but our immigration efforts, our war on drugs, our desire to see our neighboring countries stable and prosperous -- none of these will be successful until our leaders and development agencies directly address the coffee situation head on.

in the meantime, what can the average person do? a small something is often better than a big nothing. . .look for fair-trade coffee at a store near you. again, even starbucks and peets offer these coffees.

posted by fortune | 5:56 PM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments