Ruthlessly resolved to force coffee prices up, Brazil's National Coffee Council continues to burn coffee (TIME, July 6). It announced last week that 6,565,641 sacks of coffee have been burned. It promised to burn by Jan. 1, 1933 a total of 18 million sacks each containing 132 Ib. of coffee. At approximately $6.50 per sack, $117,000,000 worth of coffee will have been turned to smoke and ash.
Never before have men burned so much that is good to drink. But desperate Brazilians are convinced that their course is shrewd, point to "favorable results already." By this they mean that Brazilian coffee prices have risen in New York about 40% since the coffee bonfires were lighted last year. Other commodity prices have not kept pace, remain tragically down, thus strengthening Brazilians in their will to bean destruction.
Autocratic in word & deed, the Coffee Council cabled last week that they have "definitely and irrevocably" abandoned a plan to pay premiums to U. S. coffee merchants who use more Brazilian coffee.