25M COFFEE FARMERS 'FACING DISASTER'

Coffee farmers in the Third World are facing economic ruin because they are
not being paid a fair price for their beans, campaigners said yesterday.

While Western food giants cream off large profits, coffee bean growers are
living on the poverty line.

Oxfam campaigners yesterday protested by piling coffee sacks outside the
Cheltenham offices of Kraft Foods, which makes Maxwell House and Kenco
coffees. It is one of the big four coffee roasters, along with Sara Lee,
Procter and Gamble, and Nestle.

The charity also published a shock report entitled Mugged: Poverty In Your
Coffee Cup. It said 25million farmers in Central and South America, Africa
and Asia have seen the price of coffee halved in the past three years to a
30-year low, leaving them facing economic disaster.

The producers get only a fraction of the profits from coffee. Some may be
tempted to produce coca instead, the raw material for cocaine, especially
in Peru, Colombia and Bolivia.

Oxfam says people in a town the size of Cheltenham can expect to spend
£1.329million a year on coffee, of which just £58,598 filters back to the
coffee grower.

Oxfam South-West campaigner Roger James said yesterday: "Coffee is the
second most valuable commodity in the world after oil. Yet whenever we
enjoy a mug or buy a jar of coffee, most of the money we pay is creamed off
by the world's big four coffee producers or retailers. Only six per cent of
the retail price on a jar goes to the farmer who grew it." Oxfam is urging
people to write to the major coffee roasters and retailers calling for
fairer wages for the growers. It also wants the Government to reform the
coffee trade.

Yesterday, a Kraft Foods spokesman said: "The oversupply of coffee has led
to difficult conditions for coffee farmers. We have worked hard to address
the social needs facing people in coffee growing-regions by contributing to
hunger relief efforts."