This Thursday and Friday the National Assembly of Coffee Growers convened by the Government will be held in Bogotá.
From today until tomorrow, the National Assembly of Coffee Cooperatives and Associations will be held in the country’s capital, which will address, among other topics, the plans, policies and investments that Gustavo Petro’s Government has for the sector. The Minister of Agriculture, Jhenifer Mojica, specified that this call is aimed at organizations, cooperatives and associations. “The idea is that they choose a single member to represent them in the National Assembly,” she said. This event will also have delegates from sector entities such as Agrosavia, ICA, National Land Agency, Finagro, Banco Agrario, the Rural Development Agency and UPRA.
The Ministry assured that this space is expected to build the foundations of a Great Coffee Agreement that will aim to outline the policy to achieve 100 more years of coffee growing, and for the grain to be an engine of the national economy. However, since the announcement of this event it has become clear that the country’s main associations, as well as the National Federation of Coffee Growers, will not be part of this call, which has caused uncertainty and discomfort among some coffee leaders and unions.
Risaralda
Additionally, the main coffee grower associations in the department such as Apecafeq, Entre Verdes or La Cuchilla del San Juan will not be present either. This was confirmed by Luis Miguel Ramírez, representative of Risaralda, before the steering committee of the National Federation of Coffee Growers: “We as representatives of the coffee growers have been in permanent contact or in my case, as a representative of Risaralda. I have been keeping an eye on the municipal committees and associations in Risaralda and none of them have hinted or expressed their presence there. The Departmental Cooperative is not going to attend either.”
Stabilization Fund
Given the controversy and the approaching harvest of the first half of the year, where the figure of 5.8 million bags is expected to be reached and coffee growers are producing at a loss, the need to reactivate the Coffee Price Stabilization Fund becomes even more urgent. Javier Bohórquez, president of the steering committee of the National Federation of Coffee Growers, reported that a meeting with the National Government will be held on April 5 to propose the activation of this fund to compensate for the economic effects that have been evident for more than a year. the coffee growers in the country.
Similarly, Germán Bahamón, manager of the National Federation of Coffee Growers, shared for a national media outlet that after the National Congress of Coffee Growers held in November 2023, the Minister of Finance, Ricardo Bonilla, assured him that the current Government would not seeks to bring together an alternative entity of coffee growers.
There will be approximately $365 billion that will be executed based on what was discussed at the table this Friday, April 5. Despite this, the Representative to the Chamber for Risaralda, Alejandro García, shared the parameters that were presented during a meeting summoned by the Ministry of Agriculture to the Congressmen of the coffee bench, where it was learned that the Price Stabilization Fund of the Coffee will be activated at the beginning of May and around “130 billion pesos” will be distributed to Colombian coffee growers by August. Of this amount, 88% will correspond to small coffee growers, while the remaining 12% will be distributed between medium and large coffee growers. The remaining 240,000 million pesos will be allocated to put into operation a Comprehensive Risk Management Instrument in the second half of 2024. This tool will provide coffee-growing families with technical support, promote individual and collective savings, risk transfer and inclusion credit for those who derive their livelihood from this activity.”
Programa FAIA
On the other hand, and after the management carried out by the Government of Risaralda and the departmental Coffee Growers Committee, it was possible to link nine municipalities of Risaralda to the Fund for Access to Agricultural Inputs -FAIA, where it is expected that the coffee grower will receive a benefit of 30% of the fertilizer value. Balboa, Santa Rosa de Cabal, Dosquebradas, Guático and Quinchía are the remaining municipalities.
Tour in Risaralda
The Departmental Committee of Coffee Growers of Risaralda held a decentralized session in Guatica, where the representatives of the coffee growers listened to the needs and proposals of the members of the Municipal Committee and the La Cristalina small producers association. Jorge Humberto Echeverri Marulanda, executive director of the Risaralda Coffee Growers Committee, highlighted the importance of listening first-hand to the needs of coffee growers. Mayor Ferney Castro Colorado expressed his commitment to the development of coffee growing and announced collaboration to increase productivity. The change in the coffee yield factor was discussed and the need to clarify this information to share with the coffee community was expressed. The visit is part of a decentralization strategy to listen to the needs of coffee growers and strengthen the relationship between the actors in the coffee value chain. The committee’s tour will continue in other municipalities of the department.
Orbilio Maya, coffee farmer from Santa Rosa de Cabal: “We are totally working at a loss, even though I am a very judicious farmer, we lost our coffee. We are earning from $90 thousand pesos to $105 thousand because the quality of the coffee is very poor.”
Óscar Gutiérrez, executive director of Dignidad Coffee and Agriculture: “We are an independent organization in that sense, and we cannot go into a meeting where a thousand people are going to attend and come out committed to agreements and documents that we do not know with extremely complex issues because they talk about institutionality and parafiscality. We are going to wait patiently for the decisions they make.”