Coffee growers starve as prices plummet

PEOPLE are starving to death in the coffee-growing mountains of Paradise.

Desperate for food and medical attention, children hold rags to their swollen, red eyes and stand along the road while their parents flag down the occasional car and beg for help.

Like many coffee-growing regions, residents of El Paraiso in Nicaragua whose name translates as Paradise in English used to be able to provide for their families. But despite the growing popularity of mochas and lattes, coffee farmers are increasingly going hungry as their plants die in the field.

According to a report released by the international relief agency Oxfam, real prices are at their lowest in 100 years and a glut of low-quality beans has left 25 million coffee farmers in crisis.

Many families around the world are going hungry while banks dependent on the industry collapse. In Vietnam, one of the world's cheapest producers, farmers are covering only 60% of their production costs, while Ethiopia's export revenue from coffee fell 42% in one year, according to Oxfam's report.

It blames the five biggest roasters Nestle, Kraft, Sara Lee, P&G, and Tchibo accusing them of profiting off the poor, selling the cheap coffee with margins of up to 26%.

The crisis is especially acute in Nicaragua, which was hit while the industry was still trying to recover from both Hurricane Mitch and a civil war that ended in 1990.

Last week, farmers held five government officials hostage for a day in a desperate bid for aid, then released them after federal negotiators intervened. And for more than a year, starving farmers have left their mountainside shacks in search of food, sometimes blocking highways or setting up camps in public parks.

The federal government agreed at the weekend to provide limited finance and food to farmers, and some workers have been given temporary jobs clearing brush along mountain highways.

But that aid hasn't reached 100 people from El Paraiso who have spent this week gathered on a narrow shoulder of highway overlooking lush valleys.

Locals say 14 people from the community have died of starvation so far this year among the estimated 6,000 malnourished nationwide. Last month, government officials recorded 14 deaths nationwide from malnutrition.

No one has been told why the world market has robbed them of their salaries of 91p1.44 a day. "They don't explain to us what is the problem," said the group's leader, Santo Santeno. "This keeps happening year after year, and we still don't understand why."

Several people point to red, oozing eyes what appears to be extreme cases of conjunctivitis while one mother rips off her daughter's tattered hat to reveal the embarrassed girl's bald head and yellow, swollen face. Diagnosed with leukaemia, she has missed several chemotherapy appointments.

"Look at her!" yells Carmen Maria Castro, pointing to a gaunt woman with a swollen belly. "She has eight children, and another on the way."

Many producers have had to abandon their fields, unable to pay for labour and fertiliser.

Julio Solorzano has lost thousands of plants to disease and had to fire more than 150 workers. He pays the remaining 60 employees a salary of 1.03 65p a day, along with some rice, beans and oil. He is one of the lucky ones. Operating on a few family loans, he expects to harvest 300,000 pounds of coffee this year less than a third of his farm's capacity. Left untended, many plants have collapsed among weeds. "The plants are like people," he said. "You have to feed them, care for them, or they die."

After four decades of coffee farming, Mr Solorzano says his family can't just rip out the coffee and try another crop on the steep, tropical hillsides. "Basically, there are few alternatives," he said.

He also blames the five main roasters, which according to Oxfam buy half of the world's coffee, for keeping prices low. "They buy it cheap and sell it at high prices," he said. "How can countries like Nicaragua compete?"