Short Takes
A collection of recent stories (without a real theme uniting them):
- The BBC reports on Nestle's announcement that it will market a fair trade coffee in the United Kingdon. Nestle will purchase coffee from small farmers in El Salvador and Ethiopia for the new brand. Earlier discussions of coffee economy in El Salvador can be found here.
- Salvadorans in the United States sent more than US$2 billion home in the first nine months of the year, an 11.2 percent increase over the same period last year according to the AP. 47% of the remittances originated in California.
- The epidemic of homicides continues to plague the country. La Prensa reports that there were 343 murders in September, and a few days into October, the country exceeded the total number of murders for all of 2004. Nothing the government tries has had any impact on the murder rate.
Comments
A few weeks ago in the Colombian and Brazilian media there was discussion that there was a pending worldwide coffee shortage and that in the next few months it might dramatically increase prices for consumers (I have no illusions that much of the price increase will make it back to the farmers, unfortunately). I can't imagine the recent string of natural disasters will make that situation any better.