Posted on 03/08/2009 6:02:24 AM PDT by JACKRUSSELL
(KUNMING) -- China will export coffee directly to the United States in April, according to a deal signed between the ECUM Coffee Group and Yunnan Hogood Co. Ltd..
In a statement Saturday, Hogood said it will export 240 tonnes of coffee beans per month to Atlantic (USA) Inc., a member of the Denmark-based ECUM Coffee Group.
Before this deal, Chinese coffee reached foreign consumers via international coffee suppliers, such as Nescafe and Starbucks.
Jon H. Stefenson, director of marketing at the ECUM U.S. subsidiary, said packages of the company's coffee products will carry marks indicating the plantation origin as Yunnan.
Yunnan Hogood, which is based in Dehong Dai-Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture, is one of the largest coffee suppliers in China.
It has contracted 30,000 rural households to grow coffee. By the end of 2008, it had 5,333 hectares of contracted land.
Xiong Xiangru, chairman of the board of Hogood, said the company aimed to gradually reduce its dependence on supplying beans to foreign coffee brands. Instead, he wants to focus on promoting the company's own brand of products.
Currently, the world's top five coffee suppliers, including Nescafe, Maxim, Maxwell and Kraft have purchased beans from Yunnan. The province accounts for 98 percent of China's total coffee output, according to Xiong, president of the Yunnan Coffee Association.
Nescafe is the largest buyer of Yunnan coffee. Its purchase in Yunnan reached 8,000 tonnes last year.
Starbucks offered last month to use Yunnan coffee beans in its global procurement system.
"World consumers may have already tasted Yunnan coffee, before they recognize the coffee's plantation origin," said Xiong.
According to figures from the provincial forestry bureau, Yunnan had 23,000 hectares of coffee plantations last year. Its total coffee output was 28,000 tonnes.
Coffee planting only has a decade of history in China because many people prefer tea. However, coffee's popularity is increasing.
Better business has benefited poor farmers in Yunnan.
Zhou Yuetuan, a farmer of the Dai ethnic group, said her family earned more than 20,000 yuan (2,900 U.S. dollars) last year planting coffee.
The per capita income for farmers in the province was 3,102 yuan last year.
The best part of waking up is toxins in your cup.
We are so disgusted with the saturation of crap that comes from that still-communist country. I can not believe that we are funding their suppressive idealogy with our money. It is truly the most insane thing ever!
” make it look like butter — it was some kind of white shortening (lard?). “
Oleo is short for Oleomargerine, which is commonly known a margerine today. So worry not, you wern’t eating lard, dyed yellow :-)
I found that it really didn't take much any longer than usual. I placed my order on Saturday, and had my beans by the following Friday.
I'll have to take a look at that other site. I always like to have backups and alternatives (especially as sometimes, SM's runs out of my favorites).
In fact it’s quite good for you.
Loaded with anti-oxidants.
“Americans get more of their antioxidants from coffee than any other dietary source. Nothing else comes close,” says study leader Joe Vinson, Ph.D., a chemistry professor at the university. Although fruits and vegetables are generally promoted as good sources of antioxidants, the new finding is surprising because it represents the first time that coffee has been shown to be the primary source from which most Americans get their antioxidants, Vinson says. Both caffeinated and decaf versions appear to provide similar antioxidant levels, he adds.
He cautions that high antioxidant levels in foods and beverages don’t necessarily translate into levels found in the body. The potential health benefits of these antioxidants ultimately depends on how they are absorbed and utilized in the body, a process that is still poorly understood, says Vinson, whose study was primarily funded by the American Cocoa Research Institute.
The news follows a growing number of reports touting the potential health benefits of drinking coffee. It also comes at an appropriate time: Coffee consumption is on the rise in the United States and over half of Americans drink it everyday, according to the National Coffee Association.
Antioxidants in general have been linked to a number of potential health benefits, including protection against heart disease and cancer. For the current study, Vinson and his associates analyzed the antioxidant content of more than 100 different food items, including vegetables, fruits, nuts, spices, oils and common beverages. The data was compared to an existing U.S. Department of Agriculture database on the contribution of each type of food item to the average estimated U.S. per capita consumption.
Coffee came out on top, on the combined basis of both antioxidants per serving size and frequency of consumption, Vinson says. Java easily outranked such popular antioxidant sources as tea, milk, chocolate and cranberries, he says. Of all the foods and beverages studied, dates actually have the most antioxidants of all based solely on serving size, according to Vinson. But since dates are not consumed at anywhere near the level of coffee, the blue ribbon goes to our favorite morning pick-me-up as the number one source of antioxidants, he says.
I was recently in the market for a toaster, but the only one not made in China was made in England, and it cost more than $200.00. So I had to settle for a Chicom toaster, which cost about $20.00.
Is coffee considered a produce? If so then all of those companies will have to comply with the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008!
Which might very well induce a drop in sales, what with all of the food safety issues Chinese products seem to have.
LOL, that is what they do with their black soil.
What’s the link???
Columian Coffee- Regular or decaf
Chinese Coffee- Regular or Unleaded
Guess I will now have to check for the ‘country of orgin’ when buying coffee beans.
Oh, great.
Not only will this stuff be full of melamine and other toxic chemicals, it will predicably be produced by what amounts to slave labor.
Has anyone read up on how the Chinese are exploiting Africans? They pay off the corrupt leaders and treat the workers as slaves. No doubt the same thing will happen as their influence spreads further into Latin America.
We buy local brands, so we probably won’t get any of this stuff. But a lot of people don’t have that option, except at great cost.
Yep, my brother and I had to sit and squeeze the bags to mix up the yellow coloring with the lard or vegetable shorting (I forget what it was) that was in the bag.
“Has anyone read up on how the Chinese are exploiting Africans? They pay off the corrupt leaders and treat the workers as slaves. No doubt the same thing will happen as their influence spreads further into Latin America.”
Cicero, It’s been my belief that the reason we have never intervened in The Sudan is because of China’s interests there.
Lovely name. Sounds like a porn site.
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