Impact of Coffee on Developing Countries
Some 20 million people earn their living
in the growing, processing, transportation
and export of coffee from the 41 coffee-pro-
ducing countries participating in the Inter-
national Coffee Agreement.
Coffee is the most important single
agricultural export for Latin America and
Africa in the earning of dollars and other
foreign exchange.
Fifteen developing countries earn from
30.4 to 87.5 percent of their foreign exchange
from the export of coffee. Nonetheless, over
the period of the International Coffee Agree-
ment the dependence on coffee has been
reduced by five to 10 percent. The decline
in the coffee-to-total-export ratio illustrates
a trend toward a major objective of the
Agreement: to reduce coffee production
through diversification.
In 1966 the producing countries earned
$2,381,700,000 from coffee exports. This
figure represents 20.7 percent of the total
foreign exchange earned by coffee-produc-
ing countries in Africa and 19 percent of the
foreign exchange for the 15 major Latin
American countries made in the United
States.
Colombia's coffee sales of $163,500,000
to the United States, for example, repre-
sented 58 percent of the $282,400,000 it
spent for U. S. exports.
Brazil's earnings of $327,550,000 were
58 percent of its $565,300,000 in U. S. pur-
chases.
Guatemala coffee earned $59,340,000
in the U. S. market, 67 percent of the
$89,000,000 it spent here.
The following analysis, pointing up the
importance of coffee to the developing
economies of the major individual coffee-
producing countries of Latin America, Africa
and Asia cover: Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica,
Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nica-
ragua, Panama, Peru, Venezuela; Angola
(Province of Portugal), Burundi and Rwanda,
Cameroon, Congo (Democratic Republic),
Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Madagascar,
Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, India,
and Indonesia.