Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Frase Do Mes

Do grande Richard Dawkins:

Don't ask God to cure cancer & world poverty. He's too busy finding you a parking space & fixing the weather for your barbecue

OH SNAP!!!!! 


Quer Mais Uma Explicacao Para Os Precos Dos Vinhos No Brasil?

Parte XXXII.

Tudo que tinha que ser falado sobre impostos, logistica, gersismo, predadorismo, etc etc ja foi.

*Acho* que ja escrevi sobre isso, mas vai mais um alerta sobre precos dos vinhos no Brasil:

Diferentemente de paises produtores no mundo todo (aqui se importa MUITO MAIS que se produz de vinho fino), temos um componente a mais na cadeia: O importador.

Na europa, no chile, na argentina, qualquer loja compra diretamente do produtor, poe tranquilamente 100% em cima do preco FOB e a vida continua boa. Duvida?

Vinho sai da bodega a EUR 4.00. Vai para loja ou restaurante a EUR 8.00 = super palatavel.

Aqui o vinho vem via importador que repassa o produto ao vendedor final (as vezes nem isso, o vinho passa por distribuidor antes).

Resultado? Um show de impostos em cascatas sendo repassados assim como os markups de um que vao para outro ate chegar no consumidor.

Conheco muita loja que poe *somente* 50% de markup no vinho ao passo que no mundo se pratica os 100% com alegria. E o lojista brasileiro fica com fama de fdp. 

Ha excecoes de lojas que sao importadoras e que nao praticam margens obscenas. Mais uma vez volto a falar de redes de supermercado em alguns estados que praticam margens bem honestas. E nem assim o cliente sabe dar valor. Leitores espalhados pelo pais sabem de quais redes ou lojas eu falo.


Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Gosta De Vinho Espanhol? Deveria Gostar Ainda Mais

Seguramente um dos paises (Italia na frente??) onde os vinhos sao mais diversos em estilos, gostos, precos, cores. Falo da Espanha.

Pais de onde vem otimos vinhos para o Brasil, mas na minha opiniao sao os vinhos errados. Ribera custa bastante, assim como Rioja. E ambos requerem algum ritual para extrair o melhor dos vinhos.

Castilla- La Mancha? Muita coisa barata e de qualidade triste. 
Priorat e Montsant? Caros, espantam qualquer um.

Rueda? Altos e baixos, e caros.

Alvarinos? Os bons sao caros.

Eis que recentemente participei de uma MEGA degustacao de vinhos da regiao de Valencia. Tive a grata oportunidade de degustar brancos, cavas, tintos de cepas locais e francesas. E ao contrario do que diz algum consultor deus do vinho no Brasil nao acho a bobal (para mim somente no corte) a uva do brasileiro, mas sim a monastrell (principalmente em cortes). Muito mais a ver com o gosto do brasileiro.

Quais as caracteristicas dominantes dos vinhos vindos dessa regiao bem grande da espanha (procure DOs como Utiel-Requena)? Fruta no nariz e na boca, cor muito intensa, vinhos 'quase' tropicais, nada austeros. Tintos ou brancos, da igual. Uma vantagem dos vintos he que com o nivel de tanino nao tao alto, pode (deve-se??) tomar esses vinhos a temperatura bem mais baixa que o normal, possibilitando consumo normal ate no verao.

E saem do pais produtor com um super desconto em relacao aos caros riberas e riojas. Por R$ 45.00 tem que ser possivel achar otimos valencianos. 

Check them out.


Saturday, July 27, 2013

Leitura (Obrigatoria) De Sabado: Crise De Comida

Como lembra aquela piada; sera que vai ter lata para todos? 

Our Coming Food Crisis

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TUCSON, Ariz. — THIS summer the tiny town of Furnace Creek, Calif., may once again grace the nation’s front pages. Situated in Death Valley, it last made news in 1913, when it set the record for the world’s hottest recorded temperature, at 134 degrees. With the heat wave currently blanketing the Western states, and given that the mercury there has already reached 130 degrees, the news media is awash in speculation that Furnace Creek could soon break its own mark.
Angie Wang
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Such speculation, though, misses the real concern posed by the heat wave, which covers an area larger than New England. The problem isn’t spiking temperatures, but a new reality in which long stretches of triple-digit days are common — threatening not only the lives of the millions of people who live there, but also a cornerstone of the American food supply.
People living outside the region seldom recognize its immense contribution to American agriculture: roughly 40 percent of the net farm income for the country normally comes from the 17 Western states; cattle and sheep production make up a significant part of that, as do salad greens, dry beans, onions, melons, hops, barley, wheat and citrus fruits. The current heat wave will undeniably diminish both the quality and quantity of these foods.
The most vulnerable crops are those that were already in flower and fruit when temperatures surged, from apricots and barley to wheat and zucchini. Idaho farmers have documented how their potato yields have been knocked back because their heat-stressed plants are not developing their normal number of tubers. Across much of the region, temperatures on the surface of food and forage crops hit 105 degrees, at least 10 degrees higher than the threshold for most temperate-zone crops.
What’s more, when food and forage crops, as well as livestock, have had to endure temperatures 10 to 20 degrees higher than the long-term averages, they require far more water than usual. The Western drought, which has persisted for the last few years, has already diminished both surface water and groundwater supplies and increased energy costs, because of all the water that has to be pumped in from elsewhere.
If these costs are passed on to consumers, we can again expect food prices, especially for beef and lamb, to rise, just as they did in 2012, the hottest year in American history. So extensive was last year’s drought that more than 1,500 counties — about half of all the counties in the country — were declared national drought disaster areas, and 90 percent of those were hit by heat waves as well.
The answer so far has been to help affected farmers with payouts from crop insurance plans. But while we can all sympathize with affected farmers, such assistance is merely a temporary response to a long-term problem.
Fortunately, there are dozens of time-tested strategies that our best farmers and ranchers have begun to use. The problem is that several agribusiness advocacy organizations have done their best to block any federal effort to promote them, including leaving them out of the current farm bill, or of climate change legislation at all.
One strategy would be to promote the use of locally produced compost to increase the moisture-holding capacity of fields, orchards and vineyards. In addition to locking carbon in the soil, composting buffers crop roots from heat and drought while increasing forage and food-crop yields. By simply increasing organic matter in their fields from 1 percent to 5 percent, farmers can increase water storage in the root zones from 33 pounds per cubic meter to 195 pounds.
And we have a great source of compostable waste: cities. Since much of the green waste in this country is now simply generating methane emissions from landfills, cities should be mandated to transition to green-waste sorting and composting, which could then be distributed to nearby farms.
Second, we need to reduce the bureaucratic hurdles to using small- and medium-scale rainwater harvesting and gray water (that is, waste water excluding toilet water) on private lands, rather than funneling all runoff to huge, costly and vulnerable reservoirs behind downstream dams. Both urban and rural food production can be greatly enhanced through proven techniques of harvesting rain and biologically filtering gray water for irrigation. However, many state and local laws restrict what farmers can do with such water.
Moreover, the farm bill should include funds from the Strikeforce Initiative of the Department of Agriculture to help farmers transition to forms of perennial agriculture — initially focusing on edible tree crops and perennial grass pastures — rather than providing more subsidies to biofuel production from annual crops. Perennial crops not only keep 7.5 to 9.4 times more carbon in the soil than annual crops, but their production also reduces the amount of fossil fuels needed to till the soil every year.
We also need to address the looming seed crisis. Because of recent episodes of drought, fire and floods, we are facing the largest shortfall in the availability of native grass, forage legume, tree and shrub seeds in American history. Yet current budget-cutting proposals threaten to significantly reduce the number of federal plant material centers, which promote conservation best practices.
If our rangelands, forests and farms are to recover from the devastating heat, drought and wildfires of the last three years, they need to be seeded with appropriate native forage and ground-cover species to heal from the wounds of climatic catastrophes. To that end, the farm bill should direct more money to the underfinanced seed collection and distribution programs.
Finally, the National Plant Germplasm System, the Department of Agriculture’s national reserve of crop seeds, should be charged with evaluating hundreds of thousands of seed collections for drought and heat tolerance, as well as other climatic adaptations — and given the financing to do so. Thousands of heirloom vegetables and heritage grains already in federal and state collections could be rapidly screened and then used by farmers for a fraction of what it costs a biotech firm to develop, patent and market a single “climate-friendly” crop.
Investing in climate-change adaptation will be far more cost-effective than doling out $11.6 billion in crop insurance payments, as the government did last year, for farmers hit with diminished yields or all-out crop failures.
Unfortunately, some agribusiness organizations fear that if they admit that acceleratingclimate change is already affecting farmers, it will shackle them with more regulations. But those organizations are hardly serving their member farmers and ranchers if they keep them at risk of further suffering from heat extremes and extended drought.
And no one can reasonably argue that the current system offers farmers any long-term protection. Last year some farmers made more from insurance payments than from selling their products, meaning we are dangerously close to subsidizing farmers for not adapting to changing climate conditions.
It’s now up to our political and business leaders to get their heads out of the hot sand and do something tangible to implement climate change policy and practices before farmers, ranchers and consumers are further affected. Climate adaptation is the game every food producer and eater must now play. A little investment coming too late will not help us adapt in time to this new reality.
Gary Paul Nabhan is a research scientist at the Southwest Center at the University of Arizona and the author of “Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land: Lessons From Desert Farmers in Adapting to Climate Uncertainty.”

Friday, July 26, 2013

Musica De Sexta-Feira

Relax...

Afinal, Qual O Futuro Do Vinho No Brasil??

Voce deveria esquentar a cabeca com isso? Possivel que nao, salvo se trabalha ou ganha a vida com vinho. Entao para quem nao he do ramo sugiro que va jogar um sudoku ao inves de ler isso. Gracas a um colaborador constante do espaco que me enviou esse artigo bem interessante, many thanks to Rafael Mauaccad (link aqui) agora o rei esta peladinho. 

Economist descobriu que o ''gigante NAO acordou'', economistas celebridades viraram casaca e nao falam mais em Bovespa 100.000 pontos e sobrou ate para o vinho.

Vendas em queda, importacoes mais ainda, lojas fechando ou passando de maos. Que sera do ex-pais do futuro para o vinho? Lembram-se daquele monte de blogueiro trouxa que ficava so escrevendo sobre a maravilha do mundo vinifero nacional? Eu tambem. Sera que o mundo so pode ser rosa e lindo? 

Como fan do vinho eu gostaria de mais gente comprando vinho porque faz bem (quando nao muito), melhora a comida, a conversa, as pessoas, a vida. E o mesmo vale para azeites, cervejas, vegetais, livros, etc etc etc. 

Vamos a algumas previsoes sobre o vinho no pais, em categorias:

Qualidade: Esta cada vez mais facil produzir bons vinhos em varios lugares do mundo. Nao espere ver na sua taca aquelas coisas horrendas da decada de 90. So acho que as coisas melhoram nesse campo.

Vinho brasileiro: Como sempre os espumantes baterao aquela bola discreta e eficiente na media. Jamais chegarao as unhas dos pes de champagne, mas pelo preco serao sempre uma boa pedida. Os brancos tambem terao bons momentos com frequencia e os tintos so tendem a melhorar a medida que mais enologos aprendem a fazer vinho, escolher uvas corretas ao solo/regiao em que estao.

Consumo: Nos acostumamos as boas coisas da vida rapido. Sempre que damos passos para frente em qualidade, gosto, conforto, nao queremos voltar no tempo. Isso se aplica ao vinho. Muita gente comprou vinho demais fora do pais, estao super estocados com ofertas falsas (ou nao), cheios de dividas (apt, carro, viagens), mas uma hora o mercado volta a comprar. Ninguem que entra no mundo do vinho sai desse mundo. Essa nova classe media que surgiu com uma idade media muito jovem so contribui para que o futuro seja de um aumento per capita bem interessante. Podemos ter um aumento de 50%  no consumo per capita facilmente nos proximos 5 anos. Duvida? Eu nao, pois falamos de um consumo atual tao ridiculo de baixo que qualquer passo para frente nao requer nenhum gasto de eletrons muito grande no ciclo de krebs dos brasileiros.....

Precos:Para o seu bolso boas noticias: Vivemos uma recessao no varejo aqui e la fora os precos estao em queda (salvo na Italia e Franca), o que indica que durante um bom tempo os precos estarao sob pressao baixista. Se o cambio ajudar so um pouco, continuaremos a dispor de otimos vinhos por bons precos.

Nao esquecer que muita importadora esta walking dead e ainda entrara no mercado queimando vinho. E ha um estoque altissimo no paraiso chamado RGS. Terao que queimar esse vinho no mercado tambem. 

Fique de olho, mas va com calma porque ha muita bomba feita em 2003~2007 que tentarao vender como vinho ''evoluido''. 

Em cinco anos quem sobreviver a toda essa ''marolinha'' estara muito bem posicionado. Em todos setores. Acho ou espero isso....






Thursday, July 25, 2013

Vendas De Cervejas (Das Grandes Cervejarias) Desabam. Sera?

Ouvi de um passarinho fofoqueiro que trabalha numa grande cervejaria: Vai haver choro e ranger de dentes quando resultados forem divulgados. Se forem divulgados (vai que as empresas sao de capital fechado).

Ue? Pensei que cerveja barata fosse recession-proof? Nao tem erro, pode apostar em cervejaria, diz o expert em financas.

Hmmmmmmmmm.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Voce Esta Contente Com O Custo Brasil? Entao Leia Isso

Oba, deu Brazil no Nytimes.

Prices Fuel Outrage in Brazil, Home of the $30 Cheese Pizza

Brazil's Seeds of Protest: Brazilians express their grievances with the lack of resources invested in education and health care.
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SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Shoppers here with a notion of what items cost abroad need to brace themselves when buying a Samsung Galaxy S4 phone: the same model that costs $615 in the United States is nearly double that in Brazil. An even bigger shock awaits parents needing a crib: the cheapest one at Tok & Stok costs over $440, more than six times the price of a similarly made item at Ikea in the United States.
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For Brazilians seething with resentment over wasteful spending by the country’s political elite, the high prices they must pay for just about everything — a large cheese pizza can cost almost $30 — only fuel their ire.
“People get angry because we know there are ways to get things cheaper; we see it elsewhere, so we know there must be something wrong here,” said Luana Medeiros, 28, who works in the Education Ministry.
Brazil’s street protests grew out of a popular campaign against bus fare increases. Residents of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro spend a much larger share of their salaries to ride the bus than residents of New York or Paris. Yet the price of transportation is just one example of the struggles that many Brazilians face in making ends meet, economists say.
Renting an apartment in coveted areas of Rio has become more expensive than in Oslo, the capital of oil-rich Norway. Before the protests, soaring prices for basic foods like tomatoes prompted parodies of President Dilma Rousseff and her economic advisers.
Inflation stands at about 6.4 percent, with many in the middle class complaining that they are bearing the brunt of price increases. Limiting the authorities’ maneuvering room, the popular indignation is festering at a time when huge stimulus projects are failing to lift the economy from a slowdown, raising the specter of stagflation in Latin America’s largest economy.
“Brazil is on the verge of recession now that the commodities boom is over,” said Luciano Sobral, an economist and a partner in a São Paulo asset management firm who maintains an irreverent economics blog under the name the Drunkeynesian. “This is making it impossible to ignore the high prices which plague Brazilians, especially those who cannot easily afford to travel abroad for buying sprees where things are cheaper.”
Brazil’s sky-high costs can be attributed to an array of factors, including transportation bottlenecks that make it expensive to get products to consumers, protectionist policies that shield Brazilian manufacturers from competition and a legacy of consumers somewhat inured to relatively high inflation, which remains far below the 2,477 percent reached in 1993, before a drastic restructuring of the economy.
But economists say much of the blame for the stunningly high prices can be placed on a dysfunctional tax system that prioritizes consumption taxes, which are relatively easy to collect, over income taxes.
Alexandre Versignassi, a writer who specializes in deciphering Brazil’s tax code, said companies were grappling with 88 federal, state and municipal taxes, a number of which are charged directly to consumers. Keeping accountants on their toes, the Brazilian authorities issue an estimated 46 new tax rules every day, he said.
Making matters worse for many poor and middle-class Brazilians, loopholes enable the rich to avoid taxation on much of their income; wealthy investors, for instance, can avoid taxes on dividend income, and partners in private companies are taxed at a much lower rate than many regular employees.
The result is that many products made in Brazil, like automobiles, cost much more here than in the far-flung countries that import them. One example is the Gol, a subcompact car produced by Volkswagen at a factory in the São Paulo metropolitan area. A four-door Gol with air-conditioning sells for about $16,100 here, including taxes. In Mexico, the equivalent model, made in Brazil but sold to Mexicans as the Nuevo Gol, costs thousands of dollars less.
The ability of many Brazilians to afford such cars reflects positive economic changes over the past decade, like the rise of millions of people from grinding poverty and a decline in unemployment, which is now at historically low levels. Salaries climbed during that time, with per-capita income now about $11,630, as measured by the World Bank, compared with $6,990 in neighboring Colombia. But Brazil finds itself far below developed nations like Canada, where the per-capita income is $50,970.
As a result, a resident of São Paulo, Brazil’s financial capital, has to work an average of 106 hours to buy an iPhone, while someone in Brussels labors 54 hours to buy the same product, according to a global study of wages by the investment bank UBS. To buy a Big Mac, a resident here has to work 39 minutes, compared with 11 minutes for a resident of Chicago.
Stroll into any international airport in Brazil, and such imbalances are vividly on display, with thousands of residents packing into flights each day for shopping trips to countries where goods are substantially cheaper.
Even though the Brazilian currency, the real, has weakened against the dollar this year (it currently stands at about 2.20 to the dollar), Brazilians spent $2.2 billion abroad in May, the highest amount on record for the month since the central bank began tracking such data in 1969.
Eyeing this market, some travel agents have begun tailoring trips to Miami for clients eager to buy baby products like digital monitors, strollers, pacifiers, even Pampers wipes, which in Brazil cost almost three times as much as in the United States.
Seeking to prevent such shopping binges from getting out of control, the federal police screen travelers upon arrival, picking out people whose luggage appears to bulge with too many items. If it can be proved that Brazilians spent over a certain limit abroad, they are immediately forced to pay taxes on their purchases.
Such screening catches foreigners, too. In May, the police at São Paulo’s international airport arrested two American Airlines flight attendants, both American citizens, on smuggling charges after they were found going through customs carrying a total of 14 smartphones, 4 tablet computers, 3 luxury watches and several video games. The smartphones were hidden in their underwear, the police said, and were intended to be sold on the black market.
Before the protests began, Brazil’s government had begun trying to combat price increases. The central bank raised interest rates after an uproar over food prices this year contributed to inflation fears. The authorities removed some taxes on some products, like cars. Even so, inflation remains high while the economy remains sluggish, leaving many Brazilians fuming about the high taxes embedded in the price of products they buy.
A new federal law requiring retailers to detail on receipts how much tax customers are being charged has fed some of this anger. Fernando Bergamini, 38, a graphic designer, was stunned after spending $92 one recent day on groceries like tomatoes, beans and bananas, only to glance at his receipt and discover that $25 of that was in taxes.
“It is shocking given the services we receive for giving the government our money,” Mr. Bergamini said. “Seeing it like this on a piece of paper makes me feel indignant.”
Lucy Jordan contributed reporting from Brasília, Taylor Barnes from Rio de Janeiro, and Paula Ramon from São Paulo.

Monday, July 22, 2013

Grandes Mentiras Que Contam A Voce Sobre O Vinho: Parte IV

Um tema muito comum nas bocas de sommeliers, ''criticos de vinhos'', enofilos em geral, enologos e vendedores he a tal conversa que o "VINHO É VIVO".

Mentira. Ou como diria o Maluf em debates epicos politicos "isso he uma inverdade''. 

O vinho, bebida originada da fermentacao de mosto de frutas, assim que vai para a garrafa comeca a sofrer reacoes de oxidacao, reducao ou ambas ao mesmo tempo (bons tempos de vestibular...). As vezes essas reacoes sao desejaveis, outras vezes nao tanto. E por ultimo nao ha organismo vivo dentro do vinho. Nao ha lactobacillus vivus, nem kikos marinhos. 

O fato de que a bebida evolui, melhora, muda (as vezes piora) dentro da garrafa nao significa que "existe[a] vida na garrafa".

Em conclusao, sabios leitores: parem de espalhar nos jantares e almocos com cunhados, ex-namoradas, e vizinhas que '' vinho esta ou he um organismo vivo''. Pega mal falar tanta besteira. Sou Dr. nisso.





Friday, July 19, 2013

Perguntar Nao Ofende: Sobre A Producao De Rolhas

Responda rapido: As rolhas naturais e corticas sao TODAS feitas em Portugal, certo?

Errado.

Assim como a producao de carvalho que segundo muitos produtores so existem carvalhos americanos ou franceses (Oh, descobriram carvalho por toda a europa agora), ha sobreiro e rolhas feitas no mundo todo. Veja o quadro a seguir:


A nível mundial os povoamentos de sobreiro cobrem cerca de 42 milhões de hectares distribuídos da seguinte maneira (superfície e produção anual de cortiça):
Portugal: 660000 – 730000 ha (28-35%) / 170000-185000 ton (54-63%)
Espanha: 410000-500000 ha (18-23%) / 80000-89000 ton (22-29%)
Argélia: 410000- 480000 ha (12-21%) / 15000-27000 ton (4-12%)
Marrocos: 340000 – 400000 ha (9-18 %) 13000 -18000 ton (4-7%)
França: 100000-110000 ha (1-5%) / 5000-32000 ton (1-11%)
Itália: 90000 – 100000 ha (4-10%) 20000-26000 ton (5-6%)
Tunísia: 90000- 100000 ha (3-6%) 8000-9000 (1-2%)


Sendo assim o sagaz leitor conclui com velocidade da luz no vacuo que Portugal importa bastante materia prima. Ja Espanha e ate Italia, nao.


Musica De Sexta-Feira

Em homenagem aos que encaram o transito das cidades no Brasil. Kind of trashy music, though. New low for the blog....


Thursday, July 18, 2013

Precos De Cafe Despencam No Mundo. E Na Sua Xicara? Tambem?

Se eu acho o momento do vinho dificil, nao quero nem ver mais sobre o mercado do cafe.... da ECONOMIST. Otima leitura!

NOT everyone appreciates the pungent smell of roasting coffee. Just ask the authorities in Brazil, who have been faced with farmers burning bags of beans and chanting slogans borrowed from recent nationwide protests to demand fatter state subsidies. The farmers are upset by falling prices: their beans now fetch around $106 a 60kg bag, a four-year low and less than half what they could get a couple of years ago. A reversal looks unlikely soon.
A third of the world’s coffee is grown in Brazil. Along with other countries that mainly cultivate the tastier and pricier arabica-bean variety, it faces two problems. First, the traditional markets for their wares are saturated. Growth in Europe, America and Japan, which between them glug over half the world’s coffee, is flat. Second, in places like China, Indonesia and Brazil itself, where coffee is an affordable luxury for the middle class, the market is growing by around 5% a year. But these drinkers are filling their pots with cheaper robusta beans—what Kona Haque of Macquarie dubs the “emerging-market coffee”.
Strong demand for entry-level coffee—40% of the world’s coffee crop is now robusta beans—has enabled Vietnam to go from almost nothing a decade ago to producing 25m bags today (see chart). Worse still for arabica producers, the recession in Europe has hit demand and squeezed profits for roasters. These processors, including big food firms such as Nestlé and Kraft, have responded by blending cheaper robusta with arabica. As a result robusta prices have not fallen as fast as arabica. Even so, the narrowing gap between them has not yet prompted beancounters to reintroduce the costlier variety.
Nor is the supply of arabica beans likely to fall. In response to the high prices of 2011 Brazilian farmers invested heavily in new acreage and improved yields with better husbandry and more fertiliser. High prices also convinced Colombian farmers to replant many coffee plantations with more productive bushes. What’s more, the bumper harvest of 2012, an “on” year for Brazilian coffee bushes, should be followed by an “off” year as the bushes’ yields naturally fall after their exertions. Yet good weather means that even this year’s “off” crop is a bumper one, with the prospect of another “on” year to come.
Low arabica prices are accompanied by rising costs. Coffee is a labour-intensive crop; picking is still largely done by hand. Wages in Brazil and Colombia are rising fast and production costs are above prices. Planting other sorts of crops, the usual response to agricultural boom and bust, is not an option. Prices for sugar cane, a potential alternative, are low. Coffee is mainly grown on small plots by farmers who have known nothing else.
Consumers ought to benefit from low prices, but discerning drinkers will still be disappointed. Demand for the fanciest arabica beans is healthy, as the global proliferation of coffee chains shows. Much of the finest coffee is grown in Central America in places such as Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador. That region has been hit by leaf rust, a fungal disease, which could destroy 30% of the crop this year. Cutting back plants to deal with it is set to hit production next year, too. For the tastiest coffee, there is no chance of a cheap shot.