Friday, August 22, 2003


plan colombia

"hundreds of coffee towns and villages across colombia -- the world's second-largest [coffee] producer -- are turning into pockets of anxiety, unemployment, child malnutrition and illiteracy."

long-time readers know that i talk a lot -- possibly too much! -- about the world-price depression known as the coffee crisis and its effects on the real human beings whose efforts to provide us with our morning cup sit at our elbows every single day.

but this article isn't just another sob story. here's the sobering part: ". . .small clusters of coca -- the raw material for cocaine -- have appeared in some coffee fields . . ."

this cocaine ends up where? in our streets, dear readers! no matter how you feel about the so-called war on drugs, this not an outcome anyone could wish for.

i've written about this several times before. long-time readers and alert news observers may recall hearing the term "plan colombia."

the u.s.a. has already recently spent more than US$2 billion to stop the drug trade as part of this initiative.

wouldn't it be cheaper -- and easier -- to avoid entanglement in the colombian civil war and the crazy patchwork of guerillas, death squads, and paramilitaries by simply helping coffee farmers stay in the coffee business?

how to do this? first the u.s.a. must act quickly to rejoin the i.c.o. and then we have to help colombian farmers work to improve quality.

quality begets price begets quality, as a well-known pal of mine in the coffee trade sez. and he's right!

posted by fortune | 9:19 AM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments