|
 In order to increase coffee exports from Brazil, the Brazilian Export and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brasil) and the Brazilian Coffee Industry Association (ABIC) are going to invest 24.084 million Brazilian reais (US$ 10.3 million) in activities to promote the Brazilian product aboard between 2008 and 2010.
The new project is turned to countries that have high potential for coffee purchase.
Among the activities to be organized are Brazilian Gastronomic Weeks in renowned restaurants in South America, Asia and Europe, where typically Brazilian foods should be served, together with the sampling of Brazilian coffee.
Currently, the United States is the main market for the Brazilian product, responsible for 70% of coffee exports. The idea behind the project is to promote coffee in countries like Panama, Chile, Turkey, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Argentina, Chile, Portugal, Spain, France, Poland and Germany, among others.
The first country to receive a group or Brazilian chefs should be Chile, where the World Congress of the World Association of Chefs Societies should take place.
Coffee should also be promoted by a team of coffee experts, the Brazilian Coffee Team, which should serve several kinds of drinks using the product, all to win the taste buds of new consumers.
According to the president of the Apex, Alessandro Teixeira, in a press statement released by the organization on November 24, this is the moment to seed in the global market the image of Brazil as a producer and processor of excellent quality coffee.
According to figures supplied by the ABIC, Brazil is the main global producer of coffee, and in 2007 the country produced 33.4 million bags. Shipments totaled 28.1 million bags last year, placing the country in the position of main global exporter.
Apart from that, Brazil is the second main coffee consumer market, with 17 million bags consumed. It only loses to the United States. According to estimates by the National Food Supply Company (Conab), the country should pick 45.5 million bags of coffee in the 2008 crop.
This is not the first time that the Apex-Brasil and ABIC join forces to promote foreign sales of coffee.
In 2002, exports totaled US$ 4 million, with activities of both organizations, sales reached US$ 26 million in 2007, a total that has already been exceeded in the first 10 months of 2008, when roasted and ground coffee exports reached US$ 34 million.
Anba
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Brazil received a huge boost in its international image with its selection as the host of the 2016 Olympics, but it was really just the cherry on top of the overall recognition of the country's ascension to the ranks of one of the world's most important countries. Now, as it finally takes its place on the world scene, there has been a great deal of concern about what kind of image Brazil hopes to project, now that the world is really paying attention. 
The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose.