The International Coffee Organisation said on Friday that a proposal to place a levy on coffee to help improve farmers' livelihoods will depend on approval from the world's top roasters. A Swiss organisation, the World-wide Sustainable Coffee Fund, demanded support for the proposal at ICO meetings in London this week. The ICO is an intergovernmental organisation created under the auspices of the United Nations to serve the international coffee community.
"The ICO took note of the proposal. The difficulty is to get approval from the importing countries. We need the roasters to agree among themselves and to get their governments to take a decision," ICO Executive Director Nestor Osorio said.
The Coffee Fund suggests roasters pay $1 on every 60-kg bag of coffee sold to help fund projects to promote consumption and improve social, economic and environmental standards in coffee farming.
Many coffee farmers have struggled in recent years after prices slumped to a 30-year low in 2000. Exporting countries now only receive about 7 percent of the world's $90 billion coffee retail sales.
Roasters, particularly in the US, may not support the levy, according to one delegate close to the talks.
A Brazilian delegate, Linneu Carlos da Costa Lima, said the world's top arabica coffee producer still had to study the proposal.
The UK government and coffee industry welcomes the suggestion but wants more work on it, according to Dr Euan Paul, Chairman of the ICO's Private Sector Consultative Board and Executive Director of the British Coffee Association.
"The industry wants to move it forward but in a meaningful manner so that....the recipient gets something that helps him continue in coffee or diversify into something else," Dr Paul said. "The principal is very interesting but as it stands at the moment it hasn't got much support because there is no planning on how (the money) is to be used."
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