More than 5,000 people associated with coffee production in Mexico are looking at a gloomy forecast for 2006, following the destruction of more than 100,000 hectares by Hurricane Stan in October. Stan's torrential rains damaged coffee plantations in the southeastern states of Chiapas, Veracruz and Oaxaca, producers of high-quality coffee beans, as well as some organic production. Roads were also damaged, preventing the coffee from reaching the market, thus driving up losses.

“The delay in government aid and continued natural disasters are undermining the future of coffee,” Marcelo Herrera Herbert, member of the Chamber of Deputies coffee commission, told Tierramérica.

The lawmaker, from the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), explained that annual coffee output, estimated at four million sacks, will fall by 75 percent in 2006.