GOING BUST

Today in tiny El Salvador alone, more than 12,000 of the country's 15,000 coffee farmers are facing the repossession and forced sale of their land and livelihood. Oxfam recently talked to an experienced Colombian farmer who is about to lose his.

After 35 years in the business, Colombian coffee farmer Joaqu�n El�as Valencia Franco and his family are about to lose everything. Two local banks have seized Joaquin's farm and are about to auction it off. Joaqu�n is desperate to fight; he doesn't want to migrate to another country or quit farming or be forced to find a menial job in the city. He doesn't want the risk of his family breaking up.

At 51, with five sons from a 29-year marriage, Joaqu�n has dedicated 35 years of his life to growing coffee. He's an expert. Coffee has enabled him to send his children to school and train them in agricultural related subjects. But over the past few years, coffee prices have slumped. The crop is now ruining its owners. Joaqu�n hoped that maybe this new season might be a bit better than the last, but it is not going to be. The world coffee price continues to hover at a 30-year low of around 50 cents a pound. This is about half the cost of what many small farmers need just to break even.

Hundreds of thousands of small coffee growers all over the world are now facing in the same crisis. They are giving in to the fact that they simply can't sell their coffee beans for enough to pay their debts to local banks. In Central  America, over 600,000 jobs in the industry have been lost in the past few years. In El Salvador alone, Fesacora (the national coffee growers' association) estimate that there are more than 12,000 forced sales, repossessions and bank auctions now happening. The UN organization ECLAC says there are 15,000 coffee producers in El Salvador - meaning that more than 80% are now facing collapse. The coffee industry accounts for 10% of all the country's exports and more than 160,000 people depend on it for their livelihoods.

Several coffee-growing countries such as Honduras, El Salvador, Ethiopia and Haiti have tried introducing different rules and laws in the past year to protect their producers, but nothing is stopping the rash of failures and bankruptcies. This is a terrible, downward spiral of crisis and debt.

"We don't have even the minimum resources for food, schooling and health. How are we going to pay for the services of expensive lawyers?" asks Joaqu�n.

Mario Segura, vice-president of the Honduran coffee association ANACAFE told Oxfam: "during the last four critical years, many producers have had to struggle between being poor and miserable just in order to keep their farms, in the hope that better times will come."

Working conditions

Illegal crops

Economic collapse