Informant38

...in 1989 the agreement collapsed, in part because the U.S. government no longer viewed a managed coffee market as vital to national security. Instead it championed the ideology of free trade, coupled with ''structural adjustment'' policies imposed on developing countries by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. These institutions promoted a general model of export-led growth tied to developing countries' ``comparative advantage.''

This strategy often encouraged poor nations to increase production of green coffee and other raw materials, thereby deepening their dependence on primary commodities whose value has plummeted in the global marketplace. Not surprisingly, these production increases resulted in an oversupply of coffee that has depressed prices to record lows.

A decade ago, coffee-producing countries were receiving about $10 billion of a $30 billion annual retail market. Today, exporting countries' share has shrunk to less than $6 billion, while the value of the annual coffee retail market has nearly doubled, to $55 billion.

Who is getting ever-larger portions of the coffee bounty while everyone else is going hungry? The world's biggest coffee companies: Procter & Gamble, Kraft, Sara Lee and Nestle. Meanwhile, millions of poor coffee growers have been left in economic ruin.
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The price of coffee is a matter of life or death to millions of small-scale producers throughout the developing world. Free trade has left them in economic ruin. The time has come to make the coffee trade fair.

Bianca Jagger is a human-rights advocate