Coffee Crisis

"A move by the US to change the organic certification process is likely to make it more expensive and difficult for small-scale organic coffee growers in the developing countries, who produce the bulk of organic coffee in the world, to continue to survive.

"The Coffee Crisis” used to refer to the disastrous plunge in world coffee prices in the 1980s and 1990s that bankrupted hundreds of thousands of smallholders around the world. The US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Organic Program (NOP) is now poised to bring us the ‘Organic Coffee Crisis.’ With a breathtaking disregard for transparency, consultation and public debate, the NOP is moving to make it prohibitively expensive and logistically impossible for small-scale organic coffee growers."

Read the article