Threat to coffee growers, grounds for concern?

http://www.colombia-politics.com/threat-to-coffee-growers-grounds-for-concern/

In June 2011, the United Nations listed the Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia as a UNESCO
World Heritage site. Today, the guardians of that heritage, the Colombian coffee farmers, are facing
economic ruin, with some 550,000 families losing their livelihoods and Colombia losing a resource that
has generated export earnings and projected a positive image of the country internationally for more
than 150 years; and nobody in Colombia seems to care.

Barry Max Wills, a writer, and coffee farmer, explains why Colombia´s top legal export is in trouble.
And he asks why the government isnt́ doing more to help the industry.

«In general terms, we grow the best coffee in the world. I say ‘we’ because I am one of those
550,000 … a coffee grower, a card-carrying member of the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros de
Colombia. My partner and I farm in Caldas and produce the fine, mountain-grown Arabica coffee that
has made Colombia famous. The dilemma we face, along with our fellow cafeteros, is that, at the
current price, as determined by the international commodity markets and manipulated by rapacious
middlemen, we lose money on every pound of coffee we sell.

Colombia was once second only to Brazil in annual coffee production, but has been overtaken by
Vietnam and Indonesia, who grow predominantly the cheaper, lower grade ‘Robusta’ variety, which is
less sensitive to the conditions in which it is grown and the care with which it must be handled. The
result is an oversupply of coffee, but a shortage of the high grade Colombian.

Why?

Three things:

1. A steadily declining coffee price that has halved in fewer than 12 months, forcing many out of the
business;

2. Excessive rain in 2011, courtesy of La Niña, which disinclined the coffee trees to reproduce by way
of blossoming and producing beans;

3. Excessive dry in 2012, courtesy of El Niño, which prompted the trees to produce flowers but then
damaged the beans as they formed, as well as encouraging the coffee borer pest known as ‘broca’.

So here we are, unable to produce it any cheaper, and operating at a continual loss. Quality comes at a
cost. We still have to fertilize if the situation is not going to be further aggravated; we still have to
weed by hand; we still have to pick by hand; we still have to pay our workers every Saturday. And
because coffee is dealt in USD, we are even being punished by a strong Colombian Peso.

Money is in incredibly short supply in our towns, and businesses, shops, taxis etc. are all suffering.
Farm owners can’t pay their mortgages, and workers are fearful of, if not already, losing their jobs. We
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have one friend, a long time coffee grower, facing imminent ruin, who attempted to take his own life.
We worry that there will be more.

Cafeteros have staged protest marches asking for help from the Government. The country is booming
isn’t it? The Minister for Agriculture responded by saying that coffee is no longer a business in
Colombia (oil and minerals are the blue-eyed darlings now), and the President of the Federación de
Cafeteros (FNCC), who represents us, is alleged to have said that coffee growers are just beggars.

Well I am not above a little begging, so on behalf of 550,000 dedicated farmers, who devote their lives
to creating a world class product of which Colombia can and should be immensely proud, I beseech the
Colombian government to help us get through this crisis. The FNCC have offered a very small rebate
against fertilizer at some, so far unspecified, time in the future, but if we don’t get help now, there is a
good chance that there won’t be anything to fertilize.

All that will be left is that UNESCO World Heritage Site listing. Maybe it could be sold to a
consortium of the Japanese and the Disney Corporation and be redeveloped as a tourist attraction
featuring quaint practices of the past. It could be called Coffeeland.

By way of a coda, we had to go to Manizales for a seminar and while there had coffee in CaféJuan
Valdez, which is owned by the FNCC … by us. The staff wears t-shirts emblazoned with “Trabajo en
la tienda de caficultores de Colombia” (I work in the shop of the coffee growers of Colombia).

I bought a 500 gram pack of coffee beans from Caldas … Manizales is the capital of Caldas … our
coffee grows in Caldas. It cost 25,000 Colombian Pesos. One week earlier we were receiving CPO
55,000 for 12.5 kilos of coffee from the farm. You do the maths.

Moreover, this is less than half we were receiving last year, yet the retail price remains the same. In
fact, as far as I am aware, all around the world, the retail price always stays the same no matter how
much less we receive for our hard work.

I am sure there is a reason for this. I am probably just being naïve. After all, I can’t believe the body
that represents us, that relies on our coffee for its very existence, would gouge ever-greater profits from
our plight.

At the risk of offending the Colombian Tourism Board and its new initiative …

Who risks losing an industry that has helped build and define the country?

Who seems not to care if more than half a million families cannot afford to feed, clothe and
educate their children?

Who needs to support its coffee farmers while they are just an endangered species, and not leave
it until they are extinct?

The answer is Colombia.

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