Prices paid to small coffee growers too low to sustain farms

By DIANE STAFFORD
The Kansas City Star

In a land where customers line up for $4 lattes, most consumers hear the words "coffee crisis" and assume it refers to the high prices they pay.

But there is a more critical coffee crisis that has brewed for about four years. The victims are coffee growers who are abandoning their farms because they cannot make a living.

On a recent 5,400-mile driving trip through the coffee-growing areas of Central America, Kansas City bean buyer and coffee seller Danny O'Neill saw the crisis firsthand.

"The price farmers are getting is about half their production costs, so many are just walking away from their farms," O'Neill said. "In just the last year or two, they've become homeless and landed in cities looking for work."

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