Coffee's bitter toll

When prices fall, millions of Third World farmers find themselves struggling to survive.

By John Murphy
Sun Foreign Staff
Originally published September 14, 2003

MURANCHO KUTALA, Ethiopia - For 30 years, coffee was much more than a morning drink to farmer Amalo Sakuma.

It was his life.

He sold the coffee beans he grew on his farm in the Great Rift Valley to traders who peddled them to roasters and coffeehouses as far away as Rome and Los Angeles, earning him enough money to marry two wives and raise 10 children.

But last year when world coffee prices fell to their lowest levels in a century, the 71-year-old grandfather had had enough. He tugged up his once-prized coffee plants in disgust and joined the drug trade.

More...