What our Current Immigration Problems and Fair Trade Coffee Have in Common

Paying more than the market price for coffee gets you many, MANY more coffee growers... growers inexperienced and incapable of dealing with plant diseases. And when the coffee crops get infected, what do the new and inexperienced farmers and their kids do? They leave. It doesn't help that most of the "Fair Trade" groups want "Organic" beans, untainted by those nasty fungicides that control the rust...Figure 1. World distribution of coffee rust. (Adapted from Schieber, E. and G.A. Zentmyer. 1984. Coffee rust in the Western Hemisphere.

GUATEMALA CITY: Guatemala cut its coffee export forecast 13.8 percent for the 2012/2013 coffee harvest because of a severe outbreak of roya, or leaf rust, that also threatens to harm the 2013/2014 crop, national coffee association Anacafe told Reuters on Monday.

Anacafe said the Central American nation famed for its Arabica bean will export 3.1 million 60-kilogram bags in the current 2012/2013 season, down from the 3.6 million forecast when the coffee year began last October.

Guatemala, the region's second-biggest coffee exporter behind Honduras, exported 3.7 million bags during the 2011/2012 harvest.

The head of Anacafe, Nils Leporowski, said that the deadly roya outbreak, which kills leaves on coffee trees and makes the weakened plants produce less, could cut exports by up to 40 percent in 2013/2014 compared to 2011/2012 levels, leaving only 2.22 million bags for export markets.

"The roya attack is terrible," Leporowski said in an interview. "The fields are severely damaged. It is very worrying."

Anacafe also said Monday that December coffee exports were down 21.3 percent compared with the same month a year earlier, reaching 140,369 bags for the month.

Graphic from 2013 WSJ article

Exerpt from 2013 WSJ article...The fungus is hurting production and is expected to cause crop losses of $500 million and cost 374,000 jobs in Central America this year (2013), the International Coffee Organization says. This year (2014), the losses are estimated at over $1 billion and the linked article states"Moreover, the blight is jeopardizing the livelihood and food security of about 500,000 people who make their living in the coffee industry, especially small farmers and seasonal workers, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).".