INTL FCStone Launches ‘From the Farmer’ Origin Analysis Series

Commodities analyst and financial services provider INTL FCStone has launched a new coffee market analysis series designed to dig deeper into market factors affecting individual producer countries.

The “From the Farmer Series” of white papers is part of INTL FCStone’s Coffee Network portal, a subscription-based service for coffee traders or anyone else throughout the supply chain interested in production issues at the commodity level.

(related: Coffee Prices Hit 2.5-Year High, While Brazilian Expert Skeptical About 2015/16 Crop)

Penned by Coffee Network Editor and former Tea & Coffee Trade Journal Editor in Chief Alexis Rubinstein, the first paper in the series focuses on the past few years on production in Colombia, giving due attention to the devaluation of the Colombian peso amid a down coffee market that led coffee farmers to strike in 2013, as well as responses by some of the country’s leading institutions to the recent and ongoing leaf rust crisis. Upcoming analyses from the “From the Farmer Series” are in the works for other Latin American producing countries.

(related: 2014/15 Global Coffee Production Estimates: A Region-by-Region Breakdown)

“These first-hand accounts will provide timely, comprehensive information from the source, including weather updates, crop progress, internal prices and other data that may impact the global market,” INTL FCStone said in an announcement of the series late last month. The group says the series will also “provide farmers a platform to provide information they believe the industry should know.”

For the Colombia paper, titled “Colombia: Taking the Path of Most Resistance,” Coffee Network reached out to Alvaro Gaitan, head of plant pathology at Colombia’s Cenicafe, as well as Luis Fernando Samper, chief communications officer at the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation (FNC). Cenicafe and FNC also provided all the source data for the seven-page piece.

(related: Sustainable Values Combined with Market Tools: A Future for Specialty Coffee)

It seems “From the Farmer” may be a bit of a misnomer, but the paper nonetheless provides a concise overview of the most recent market forces affecting Colombian coffee, as well as insightful commentary from some institutional leaders who have a vested interest in the collective success of Colombian smallholder farmers.

The first paper is available here.