Venezuelan Coffee Basically Doesn’t Exist Anymore

[Bacchus4.0]

http://ecosalon.com/venezuelan-coffee-basically-doesnt-exist-anymore/

Venzeula’s coffee industry has been in a steep decline in the last several decades. Once prized for its coffee including varieties from the Maraciabos port and Caracas (named after the capital city) of the country’s eastern mountains, Venezuela now makes less than one percent of the world’s coffee even though it once rivaled Colombia in terms of production.

Venezuela’s coffee industry began to suffer after president Hugo Chávez mandated price controls over coffee in the early 2000s, nationalizing the country’s large roasters. Farmers began selling at a loss to the government. Many found it too unsustainable, turning their focus to other crops or getting out of the farming business altogether. But Trappist monks, best known for producing beer in Belgium, fall under the artisanal producer category, and are protected from the country’s nationalization of coffee. Trappist monasteries require several hours of work each day for the monk residents, and a monastery in Mérida has been leading the charge in the country’s artisan-roasted coffee category. Monks can roast and sell coffee, but at significantly higher prices than the government—selling for about $21 for a half pound, versus the country’s median price of about $1 per pound for the nationalized coffee beans.

The coffee situation is so poor in Venezuela, and the country is expected to import more coffee this year than it produces, for the first time in history. Blight is devastating what few growers remain. Some of the country’s remaining growers have even resorted to cutting the coffee with corn and other fillers to pad their profits. Current president Nicholas Maduro has banned all exports of Venezuelan coffee, forcing artisan crafters, like the Trappist monks, to compete with the low government prices, or even sell their beans illegally in Colombia.

The monks need help. “We went to the office of the Ministry of Agriculture in Mérida and told them our situation. They gave us the phone number of a depository that might have some green beans in Trujillo” one of the monks told Vice. “We went to the factory and it was just a bunch of people bagging up B-grade beans from Nicaragua. We can’t sell that as gourmet coffee.” Venezuela’s Ministry of Agriculture recommended the monks look to the black market for illegal beans.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. A dollar per pound and no exports?

Did they just pick a random number out of the air?

We've seen it in America - cheap product is not the solution to poverty. Your people need jobs that PAY. High wages are the solution, which is why people are fighting for minimum living wages. And you can't produce coffee at a buck a pound and still provide high enough wages for those involved.

[Bacchus4.0]

2. Yep, and poverty is shooting way up there n/t

[betterdemsonly]

5. Only since oil prices dropped. Before that time exteme poverty had dropped by 2/3.

Unemployment by 1/2. http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/venezuela/110715/chavez-poor-social-welfare-reelection

The problems in Venezuela correlate to oil prices, not coffee. The biggest problem in Venezuela was dependence on oil exports, so the economy would be a wreck under a Pinochet regime as well. It is not likely a right wing government would do anything to reduce Venezuela's dependence on oil exports.

The coffee industry is in crisis throughout South America, so it is not surprising the tiny Venezuelan sector would possibly be wiped out.

[Bacchus4.0]

6. Poverty is up 25% in 2014 and may 70% of the population may be below the poverty line this year

Dependence on oil has only increased under chavismo with potentially profitable sectors like coffee and cacao being just about erradicated due to government policies.

[betterdemsonly]

8. The declines in Venezuela may well owe themselves to competition from new growers in Viet Nam

and Brazil. There is a glut in the coffee supply now, just like the glut in oil production and it is bringing the price of coffee down. Just read the business press. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-21/coffee-declines-to-lowest-in-15-months-on-global-supply-outlook This will hurt some smaller growers. The Venezuelan government has no more control over this than the price of oil. Yes the Ven people are hurting, but installing a right wing government wouldn't change these things. It would just undo some of the gains that reduced poverty before Chavez died.

The segment of the Coffee connoisseurs that love Ven coffee may be unhappy but people who like Viet Namese and Brazillian Coffee will be thrilled. That is a function of the market, not Venezuelan policies. Venezuela still sells its commodities in that market and still takes a hit when there is a glut. This would not change under a right wing government. The Venezuelan version of Pinochet would not do anything about competition from new coffee growing areas.

[Bacchus4.0]

10. The Venezuela government sets the price of coffee (and oil) in Venezuela and banned coffee export

from the link in the OP: Current president Nicholas Maduro has banned all exports of Venezuelan coffee, forcing artisan crafters, like the Trappist monks, to compete with the low government prices, or even sell their beans illegally in Colombia.

The market did not set the price controls and ban exportation. The Venezuelan government did.

An alternative to the current authoritarian government Venezuela has need not be right wing.

[hunter]

3. Problems with global warming and climate change are often masked as "political" problems.

The predatory U.S.A. empire is quick to take advantage of any weakness in a nation it doesn't control, and then blame the victim for his suffering.

Once a nation sells it's soul for the almighty dollar, and the world's billionaire oligarchs are collecting their Danegeld, things are restored to "normal" in a nation; that is a society where the oligarchs control the wealth and everyone else is a wage slave fearful of losing their jobs and thus tolerating the abuses of their "employers."

Venezuala is suffering the collapse of oil prices, a collapse engineered by the oligarchy, shortages of electricity caused by climate change, and the collapse of it's coffee industry, likewise caused by climate change. The politics is a symptom, not a cause. "Traditional" socialist policy won't fix that, might even make things worse, and "traditional" Capitalist policy transfers wealth and autonomy to the Oligarchs.

[Bacchus4.0]

4. Climate change isn't causing a collapse in coffee in Vietnam, Colombia or Brazil

Oil prices are down to a supply glut, in part, due to increased US production. The Ven government's ineptitude and stupid policies are responsible for their woeful economic problems. The decay of the energy supply system and agricultural production are vivid examples of that.

Venezuela sells its oil for the almighty dollar.

[hunter]

7. Note that I did not say what you imply.

But I do find your faith in traditional capitalist beliefs and the language you use interesting.

We need a new language of economics. What we now call economic productivity is a direct measure of the damage we do to both the earth's environment and the human spirit.

I have zero respect for either the coffee or the oil industry oligarchs. Yes, the "ineptitude and stupid policies" contribute to Venezuela's problem, but their core problems are attributable to climate change and the corruption of our international economic systems; corruption that is obscured by the language of the so-called "free market."

[B2G]

9. Venezula is the only country being impacted due to climate change?

Try again.

[hunter]

12. No. But they are a country not willing to play by the "rules" of big money.

They've been burned by big money and empire. They are similar to Greece in some ways.

Do you dare suggest the average Venezualian coffee plantation worker or, let's say, a Greek olive plantation worker is at fault here?

The upper taxable classes reject taxes because their government is as corrupt as they are.

The common people, living day by day, simply muddle through, payday to payday, same as it ever was.

That they would quit giving a flying fuck about coffee exports or toilet paper shortages is not surprising.

Truly sustainable coffee that pays living wages to the workers producing it is a rare brew. Same with olive oil. The international trade stinks of empire, corruption, and wage slavery.

[B2G]

13. Which has exactly what to do with climate change?? nt

[hunter]

14. Drought in Venezuala is real.

Agriculture and electric power generation have taken huge hits.

The rough politics, the socialism vs. capitalism blather, are symptoms of that.

Google Venezuela drought

Politics in California are going to get rougher as drought continues here.

Our mass media ignores those displaced by the drought, or else blames them for their own troubles.

The big land owners who have grown fat off cheap farm labor and government subsidized water won't starve even if their almond trees wither away and they have to sell all their cows as cheap hamburger. Their clever accountants have protected them with corporate mechanisms unavailable to the people they employed when water was plentiful.

If the drought in California continues and, let's say California wines and almonds become a much smaller fraction of the international market, how are we going to spin that?

[Adrahil]

16. If you fix prices below production costs, WTF do you expect!?

Seriously, VZ has implemented the most bone-headed of policies. Price controls DO NOT WORK. They never have, they never will.

[betterdemsonly]

11. Venezula is a democracy. If people find what is happening intolerable

They can elect something different. Trappists are religion, not a business. While it is nice when they can find some profitable product, like wine or beer, that can never be guarenteed. The free market surely wouldn't guarantee it. Most businesses fail.

[sendero]

15. There are things some people call "socialist"..

... that work, and some that do not. Price controls have not, do not and never will work, they are stupid. Their result is well known and highly predictable. For goodness' sakes.

[Adrahil]

17. This is so very, VERY correct. n/t

[Prism]

18. The best coffee I ever had was Venezuelan

Some little cafe near Berkeley served this fair trade, etc etc. brand of Venezuelan coffee as their house brew. It ruined other coffee for me. I only had it once in awhile (it's one of those ultra pricey brunch places), but I haven't been in ages.

I'm saddened to learn about this. =(