The government’s new Wellness Coffee program is not yet 10 days old and already it is facing opposition.
Coffee producers in the state of Veracruz accuse the government of offering below market prices, insist the program will damage the prestige of their product and allege that beans from Brazil are likely being blended into the final product.
Cirilo Elotlán, a producer from Coatepec, Veracruz, said the government is offering 4,500 pesos for each quintal (57.5 kg) of coffee, whereas the market price is 6,000 pesos per quintal.
Other Veracruz coffee growers complain that the instant coffee program is unfavorable, because the quality of the coffee suffers when it is dehydrated. Elotlán said the production of instant coffee diminishes the reputation Veracruz coffee has earned.
Although the government said Wellness Coffee is 100% Mexican, it described the new product as a blend of Arabica and Robusta varieties of beans. Veracruz producers say the majority of Robusta beans are grown in Brazil.
Elotlán argues that the new initiative “imitates the practices of transnational companies that coffee growers have opposed for years.”
“Support for the program among small producers is due to their lack of knowledge of the market and the lack of opportunities to distribute their product,” Elotlán said.
Another opponent of the program, Cirio Ruiz González of the Coffee Price Monitoring Commission, proposed that the federal government promote the sale of roasted coffee, insisting that competing in the instant coffee market is not the solution.
“It would be better to promote training, distribution and marketing in the national market, but for fine roasted coffee beans,” he said.
Small growers could also be taught how to roast their own beans, Ruiz added, and this would allow them to market their own brands, boosting their profile.
Mexico introduces instant ‘Wellness Coffee,’ sourced from Oaxaca, Puebla, Veracruz and Guerrero
The Wellness Coffee brand was launched on Sept. 3 and introduced by President Claudia Sheinbaum as “fair trade for the benefit of the people of Mexico.”
To get the program off the ground, an initial investment of 59.4 million pesos (US $3 million) was used to purchase more than 913 metric tons of coffee from 6,646 small producers in the states of Oaxaca, Puebla, Veracruz and Guerrero.
Sheinbaum said the program aims to reduce poverty in coffee-growing communities by ensuring fair payment for harvests, allowing producers to make a living from their work. The government also announced plans to build an instant coffee plant.
With reports from La Jornada and Momento Financiero
What is the actual Spanish name of “Wellness Coffee” brand? I hope that it is not true that the manufacturer is using Brazilian coffee instead of Mexican coffee. That appears to me to be contrary to the “Mexico Plan”.
I wonder if MND could investigate this in depth?
I was the editor for this story and I also wondered about the Brazil claim. The lack of government transparency in Mexico would make it extremely difficult (maybe impossible) to do a conclusive investigation.
I did, however, look into how much robusta coffee is grown in Mexico. I quickly found several small and mid-sized producers selling robusta, so it seems plausible that the government is telling the truth.
I’d speculate that the producers are unhappy with the low prices and the fact that the govenrment doesn’t want to buy more of their high-quality arabica (no point in getting the good stuff when the final product is instant coffee) — but that the accusations about including Brazilian coffee were made out of anger more than logic.
Wellness Coffee = Cafe Bienestar.
Exacto!
I’m confused about how the government can tout “fair trade” practices when they’re buying it for below market value, which seems like the opposite…both can’t be true!
Where I live in Veracruz, instant coffee is mostly for emergencies when you’ve run out of the good stuff 😂 there’s a LOT of great coffee! Shout out to La Onza in Coatepec, what I consider the best roasted coffee in the state! (If you want some, you have to go physically to their tiny no-frills store without even a cafe attached during the odd hours they’re open).
Maybe mexico should educate its coffee consumers how to make coffee from ground beans instead of promoting instant coffee.
Instant coffee is nasty. Chiapas and Veracruz coffee is a premium product and should be priced accordingly. If you’re going to pour a bunch of sugar and milk into coffee, I guess it doesn’t matter.
My first reaction was negative, both for the buying price and also for the instant coffee aspect of it. But the Bienestar program is intended, at least in part, to provide the poor and working poor with unadulterated grocery staples at reasonable prices, and to provide growers on the margins with a market. 900 tons seems like a lot of coffee beans, but is a small fraction of annual Mexican output. It’s not a total solution, but it’s an option that perhaps wasn’t there before for the coffee growers without contracts from major buyers. And shoppers at Tiendas Bienestar can stay caffeinated without paying Nestle for the fix.