WHAT PEOPLE ARE DOING
IN THE CRISIS OF THE C PRICE

In Colombia, one of the big coffee growers, many areas used to be home of coffee. Now, people use them for bananas. Ramon Elias Ramon Elias revealed the changes happening, including the recent toppling of more than half the farm’s coffee crop, replacing the plots with avocado, lime, sugarcane, and banana or even marijuana, coca. 

Coffee buyers have been paying approximately $22 USD for 12.5 kilograms of coffee beans during the first quarter of 2019. The cost to produce that amount of coffee is estimated at between $19–21. Farmers work for nothing? 

On April 24, Gutierrez led a one-day protest in Armenia, a city of 300,000 people that’s located 15 miles from Quimbaya. A couple thousand representatives from coffee regions throughout Colombia participated in the march. They gathered to renewed their call for a coffee price for nothing.

“The things we earn are only to eat,” she says. “We don’t bring in money for our kids. Farming does not give enough. So we are here, we left our homes to see if soon the president is going to say, ‘I’m going to boost [help for you].’ – Maria Dorado, 56, a Colombian farmer. 

Farmers are asking for help!

The Agriculture Ministry of Colombia has denounced calls for a protest, declaring that the government has already dedicated approximately $80 million to subsidies and additional forms of aid for growers. But protesters insist that’s not enough to deal with the current crisis.

The government at least tried… a little

Coffee leaders from Brazil and Colombia, the world’s two largest coffee producers, met in advance of next month’s World Coffee Producers Forum in Brazil to discuss solutions to the price crisis.

Held at the headquarters of Brazil’s agriculture ministry in Brasilia, the meeting comes nearly 10 months after leading representatives of both countries’ coffee sectors released a joint statement taking the coffee industry to task for not responding to low prices.

“Indeed, the situation is grave” representatives from both countries, including the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation (FNC) and the Brazil Specialty Coffee Association (BSCA), said in an announcement following the meeting last week. “Prices, which have declined sharply since Brazilian and Colombian coffee leaders last met in August 2018, are now below production costs, contributing to the impoverishment of coffee-producing farms all the world. This will create an uncertain future not just for growers but for consumers as well.”

“The time has come to take the lead globally. We need to find solutions fast before thousands of coffee growers go out of business around the world,” José Marcos Magalhães, president of the 5,000-grower-member cooperative Minasul, based in Brazil’s Minas Gerais region, said after the meeting. “The longer this crisis drags out, the more producers will quit the coffee business.”

Leaders all agreed upon the importance of market transparency so that future coffee deals can reflect the realities of the industry without the interference of external factors such as market buy-and-sell dynamics that lead to pricing volatility and increasing industry insecurity.

Leaders and coffee organizations in Brazil and Colombia are doing what they could in their authority to help farmers, farming as well as the wold coffee world.

Coffee organizations are trying for the coffee industry

– FNC: Federación Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia – Colombian Coffee Growers Federation

– BSCA: Brazil Specialty Coffee Association

– ICE: Intercontinental Exchange