Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-04-10-Speech-4-038"
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"en.20030410.3.4-038"2
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"Mr President, I want to thank Commissioner Liikanen for his introductory speech. Just as he says, the price of coffee has fallen dramatically in recent years. We now have the lowest real price in decades, and it does not seem especially likely that prices will increase in the foreseeable future. The price of the raw material itself is at present approximately just one per cent of the price on the market. An ordinary coffee planter in Tanzania or Kenya earns at best a few euros per week. That means that he or she – it is often women, by the way, who work on the coffee plantations – would have to labour for a week or more in order to afford a single cup of coffee in a bar here in Strasbourg.
Until the end of the Cold War, prices were reassuringly maintained. You could survive on planting coffee. Developments in recent years have, however, been devastating. Competition has become tougher. Just one of many reasons for this is that the World Bank has helped new countries outside Africa to organise large-scale coffee planting. As so often, subsidies – however important they may appear in individual cases – have dealt a blow to prices and, in that way, damaged the prospects of survival for millions of small coffee planters, especially in Africa.
The collapse in coffee prices has led to a major crisis for tens of millions of coffee planters in dozens of developing countries, where coffee is not only an important source of jobs and income in the countryside, but also of currency income.
One problem in this connection – also addressed by Mr Liikanen – is that cultivation is too often unbalanced, and this naturally exacerbates the consequences of the crisis. As long as small coffee planters are dependent upon just a single crop, their economic situation is, and will remain, incredibly precarious. It would therefore seem incredibly important to diversify production, and there are opportunities for doing this that have not been made use of. This presupposes, however, the adoption of a comprehensive approach to the system of cultivation. I shall not attempt a more detailed scientific analysis, but allow me to give an example. The coffee bush cannot at present be used for animal feed. It contains caffeine, which animals cannot tolerate. What is interesting, however, is that it is possible to cultivate excellent, nutritious mushrooms from the remnants of the coffee bush. These mushrooms, for example shitaki mushrooms, are of high nutritional value and produce a much higher price per kilo on the market than coffee does. Once the mushrooms have done their job and soaked up the caffeine, the remnants may be used as animal feed. Suddenly, the indigent coffee planter has several different sources of income and more work opportunities.
Worthwhile projects are under way at present, for example in Colombia, to promote a broader view of the cultivation system. As everyone without exception will surely appreciate, this presupposes, however, knowledge derived from a variety of research disciplines and not a one-sided focus upon a single crop.
In common with Commissioner Liikanen, I too do not believe there are quick and simple solutions. The issue must nonetheless be addressed, and this must happen immediately within the framework of the whole Doha process and, above all, within the framework of our continued cooperation with those countries within our immediate purview.
As our resolution intimates, a long list of measures may be taken in the short term, especially to help those coffee planters who have ended up in this very problematic situation. It should be possible to make use of the major surpluses within the European Development Fund to step up our efforts in the field of rural development – rural development that would then become more diversified in form than it would by focusing solely upon individual crops. Through dialogue with the big coffee producers and retailers, it should also be possible to ensure that better wagers are paid to the indigent coffee planters.
I have only had time to touch upon just a few aspects of this issue. I would thank Mr Liikanen for his contribution, and I look forward to continued dialogue."@en1
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