Juan Valdez Wants More Cash

With his cream-colored sombrero, bushy mustache, and white cotton poncho draped over his shoulders, Dario Loaiza looks like he could have stepped out of an ad for Colombian coffee. But unlike the ubiquitous Juan Valdez, this veteran coffee farmer isn't smiling. Loaiza is getting less each week for the beans he sells at the coffee cooperative in Neira, a small town in eastern Colombia. "If coffee continues at this price, we're going to have to beg in the streets to support ourselves," grouses Loaiza, 57, standing inside the co-op's warehouse.

Help may be on the way for the world's cash-strapped coffee farmers. The 14-member Association of Coffee Producing Countries (ACPC) has brewed up a plan to boost prices which, at less than $1 a pound for higher-quality mild coffee, have plunged 60% in three years because of oversupply. The scheme would keep up to 7 million 60-kilo bags of beans off the market for the year starting in June. That would demand an unusual show of unity from the members of the coffee cartel. Still, if ACPC pulls it off, it soon may be the turn of U.S. and European java lovers to grumble over prices.