Development & Aid, Environment, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

COLOMBIA: Farmers Replace Coca Crops with Organic Coffee

Yadira Ferrer* - Tierramérica

BOGOTA, Dec 21 2004 (IPS) - Peasant farming families in Colombia are abandoning their illegal drug crops and staking their bets on fair trade organic coffee. They have already exported some 5,000 60-kilo sacks of coffee beans this year.

A new coffee-exporting company, owned by farmers that used to grow coca leaf – the raw material for cocaine – now aim to consolidate the business and improve their communities.

Exposurca is the export arm of Cosurca, a cooperative of small farmers, including Indians, in the department of Cauca, a mountainous area in southwest Colombia that is otherwise ideal for the illegal cultivation of coca. The cooperative was established five years ago, and now involves 1,624 families, with some 1,200 operating small coffee plantations.

The fields of organic coffee – grown without chemical fertilisers or pesticides – cover 78 hectares of a total 148 hectares that used to grow coca bush. The illicit plants have been eradicated.

The coffee varieties Typica, Caturra and Colombia are exported to Spain, United States, France, Britain, Netherlands and Japan, among other countries, which pay an average of two dollars per pound (0.45 kg). The average price of non-organic Colombian coffee is less than a dollar per pound on the New York exchange.

”Our company broke away from the traditional marketing scheme. Our farmers did away with sales intermediaries so receive more for their coffee,” Exposurca director René Ausecha told Tierramérica.

Cosurca began exporting coffee through intermediaries in 2001, and Exposurca was formed in 2004, with a two-million-dollar investment from the United Nations and contributions from the Colombian government.

For Floro Ruiz, a coffee grower from the town of Argelia, the organic coffee project is serious business – it has allowed the families involved to reinstate their personal values and improve their income.

The small farmers who turned to growing coca did so as a means of financial survival, ”and when an alternative is found, as in our case, we feel proud that we don’t have to carry the weight of relying on an illicit crop,” Ruiz told Tierramérica.

In addition to coffee, the peasant farmers who have given up their coca crops are growing plantain, fruits and vegetables.

The southern region of Cauca is one of the clash points where government armed forces run up against leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary groups, which seek control over the illicit drug crops.

Pressure to increase coca production in the region led farmers to give up growing food crops for their own consumption, created distortions in the labour market, triggered inflation in the local economy – and brought with it more violence.

Environmentally, Cauca has suffered pressure on its ecosystems: figures from the Environment Ministry indicate that to grow one hectare of coca, four hectares of forest are destroyed. Furthermore, unique species have been destroyed, the soil degraded and rivers contaminated by the chemicals used to process coca leaf into cocaine.

The coffee sold by Exposurca is certified ”fair trade” by the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation International (FLO), guaranteeing coffee growers income at least 45 percent higher than the average price on the New York exchange.

According to Freddy Urbano, the project’s technical advisor, coffee exports under FLO conditions ”provide the opportunity to generate economic resources to invest in the crops, the family and in organisational strength.”

Sandro Calvani, representative from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, said during an Exposurca presentation in April that ”the fair market can relax because with the creation of an exportation arm there is a more equitable redistribution of the coffee revenues amongst the growers, and ensures that the small farmers will see their earnings increase more than 40 percent.”

The UN, through its reconversion programmes, has invested in products like coffee to discourage the drug trade, faced with the boom in illicit drug crops that occurred in Colombia in the 1990s, he said.

Colombia is the world’s second leading coffee producer, with annual harvests averaging between 10.5 and 11.5 million 60-kilo sacks.

(* Yadira Ferrer is a Tierramérica contributor. Originally published Dec. 18 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)