Honduran Coffee Cooperative COMSA Faces Crisis as Hamburg Importer's Insolvency Leaves Twelve Containers Unpaid

The insolvency of a Hamburg-based coffee importer has left the Honduran cooperative Café Orgánico Marcala S.A. (COMSA) facing a financial disaster, with twelve shipping containers of coffee likely to be paid only partially. Rodolfo Peñalba, who lives in the small town of Marcala near the border with El Salvador and maintains his own five-hectare coffee farm, checks COMSA's account daily. The cooperative is among the ten largest coffee exporters in Honduras, a Central American nation. Its 1,272 members, including 421 women, each cultivate an average of five hectares. Beyond coffee, they grow fruit trees, precious hardwoods, and banana plants among the shrubs with dark green leaves. Most members practice agroforestry. The unpaid containers spotlight an asymmetric market and highly volatile world market prices. The full report appears in the current issue of Der Freitag.