中美洲咖啡贸易“咖农”.docVIP

Coffee in Central AmericaFair enough??还算公道——中美洲咖啡贸易与“咖农”Mar 30th 2006 | MEXICO CITY AND SAN JOSEacute;From The Economist print editionTaking the quality route to survivalHeading for your skinny frappuccinoMAKING good coffee is not a simple business. Coffee bushes must be grown in shade—neither too much, nor too little. A hillside is best—but it mustnt be too steep. After three years, the bushes will start to produce bright-red coffee “cherries”, which are picked, processed to remove the pulp, and spread out to dry for days, ideally on concrete. They are milled again to separate the bean, which needs to rest, preferably for a few months. Only then can it be roasted, ground and brewed into the stuff that dreams are quelled with. 生产优质咖啡并不是一件简单的事情。咖啡树必须种在荫凉处——不宜太稠密，也不宜太稀疏，最好种在山坡上——但不能太陡。三年之后，咖啡树即可结出鲜红的咖啡“樱桃”。采摘后，经加工去除（外面的）果肉，（将里面的咖啡豆）铺开干燥数日（最好放在混凝土上），然后再次研磨，分离咖啡豆，后者最好静置数月。此后才可进行烘焙、碾磨、发酵，最后制成成品咖啡豆。恰恰就是这些咖啡豆，压制了许多人的梦想。In Mexico and parts of Central America, as in Colombia and Peru further south but not in Brazil, most coffee farmers are smallholders. They found it especially hard to deal with the recent slump in the coffee price. The price has since recovered: the benchmark price applied to mild coffee now ranges from $1.11 to $1.14 per pound. That is roughly double its rock-bottom level of August 2002. 跟哥伦比亚、秘鲁以南（不包括巴西）一样，墨西哥和中美洲部分国家的大多数咖啡种植户都是小农。最近咖啡价格的暴跌让他们感到不知所措。目前，价格已经回升：现在淡咖啡的基准价为每磅1.11美元到1.14美元，大约两倍于2002年8月时的最低价。But the volatility of their income makes it hard for farmers to invest to sustain their crop, says Fernando Celis of the Mexican National Organisation of Coffee Growers. The slump forced many small farmers to switch to other crops, or migrate to cities. Mexicos exports of coffee are less than half of what they were six years ago. /不过，墨西哥全国咖啡种植者组织的费尔兰多?塞利斯说，收入的不稳定让农户难以投资维持作物的种植。价格下滑迫使许多农户改种其他作物或者迁往城市。墨西哥的咖啡出口额较6年前减少了将近一半。For farmers, one way out of this dilemma is to decouple the price they are paid from the international commodities marke