Who grows the best tasting coffee in Latin America?
Trade information by mobile
Between the Common Catalogue on one side and regulations on the entry of new agricultural products on the other, it does sometimes seem like the EU just doesn’t want farmers to grow diverse crops, either within its borders or indeed anywhere else on Earth. Anyway, on the latter issue, maybe one of the answers is for developing world farmers to trade more among themselves. One of the bottlenecks to that, of course, is the availability of price and other information. So it was really interesting to read in The Economist about tradenet, an internet application developed by a software company out of Ghana that enables users to exchange market information, including by SMS text messages. Mobile telephony is of course expanding at tremendous speed in Africa. Tradenet is basically a sort of eBay for agricultural products, where you can put in your bid by cell phone. And more. Listen to this: “we will incorporate the ability to generate digital maps of your country with overlays of pricing for commodities, as well as include key markets in neighboring countries, where you can zoom or pan around vector maps.” Cool or what?
Nuts 2
Crops in the news
I’m not sure what to make of newspaper articles describing how to grow and process staple crops. On the one hand, it is nice to see the mainstream media take on agricultural subjects. On the other, it is sometimes difficult to see who exactly is meant to benefit from articles such as this on cassava from the St Kitts & Nevis and this on sweet potato from Zambia. Any thoughts?
Nuts
I just heard a programme on the BBC World Service in the One Planet series called “Nuts.” It looked at the problems encountered in developing the Brazil nut as a source of income for poor Amazonian farmers. Unfortunately, it appears that some very tight – some would say unreasonably tight – EU regulations about levels of aflavotoxins are preventing exports. There’s part two next week. The website for the One Planet series is here, but this particular programme does not seem to be online yet. I’ll keep looking out for it. Coincidentally, WWF also has a long piece on the Brazil nut out today, which you can find here. International Trade Forum had a piece on Brazil nuts here in 2004.