USAID Funding Volunteer Program to Address World's Coffee Crisis 

(Coffee Corps designed to help poor nations "grow" out of poverty)

15 January  2003 

By Eric Green Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is providing seed money for a new volunteer program to address the crisis faced by small coffee farmers in Latin America and in nations elsewhere -- such as in East Timor and the East African countries of Uganda, Burundi, and Ethiopia -- which rely heavily on coffee for the majority of their export revenues.

In a January 14 statement, USAID said it will work with the non-profit, California-based Coffee Quality Institute (CQI) to improve the livelihoods of coffee farmers, workers, and entrepreneurs in developing countries and to establish a "Coffee Corps" to help ensure a reliable global supply of quality coffee.

The Coffee Corps volunteers will develop projects to address the business needs of small coffee farmers. Potential projects may range from consulting on post-harvest processing improvements to environmental issues. The volunteers will be experts in the coffee industry who are willing to share their time and talent with coffee farmers and coffee communities. USAID will provide initial funding for the program, while CQI will pay for volunteers' travel and basic living costs during their assignments, which will typically run for about two weeks.

USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios said the partnership with the CQI is an "innovative way to address the crisis facing small coffee farmers around the world." Natsios said the partnership is "exactly the kind of program we had in mind" when U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell announced in May 2001 USAID's Global Development Alliance, a new model for the agency to work with the private sector and non-governmental organizations in providing assistance.

Natsios said the volunteer program will rely on the "expertise, technology and resources of private corporations and others to help poor countries grow out of poverty." He added that "by mobilizing top-level expertise on a volunteer basis from U.S. coffee companies, the Coffee Corps program will help small farmers improve the quality of their production and tap into high-paying markets that would have been inaccessible to them."

USAID said that the crisis has hit such regions as Central America particularly hard, because an oversupply of coffee on world markets has driven coffee prices to historic lows and caused great hardship to the area's coffee producers and coffee workers.

Adolfo Franco, USAID's Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean, said that in the last year Central American coffee producers lost about $1.5 billion while 600,000 coffee workers lost their jobs.

In a December 31 op-ed column in The Washington Times, Franco wrote that his agency signed in 2002 a Quality Coffee Agreement with Panama, the Dominican Republic and five Central American countries in which USAID will provide $8 million for a program to assist small and medium-sized coffee producers to improve coffee quality and form new business linkages. The program will also secure longer-term contracts with the specialty coffee industry and identify and implement crop diversification options for producers who cannot be competitive.

Franco said his agency's effort to form partnerships with private corporations and organizations will help coffee-producing countries affected by the sharp fall of world coffee prices. For instance, USAID's agreement with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters of Vermont will support the development of small- and medium-scale coffee producers that are environmentally, socially and economically sustainable.

Franco said the agreement "will improve livelihoods and incomes for coffee farmers and their communities while maintaining a reliable supply of coffee in the range of qualities demanded by consumers."

Groups interested in requesting Coffee Corps assistance should contact the organization on-line at: http://www.coffeecorps.org.

(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)