Threat to coffee growers, grounds for concern?

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

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.

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 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 Café Juan 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.