A Bitter Fate for Sugar Workers

Sugar cane workers protest for their jobs in Risaralda. (Photo: El Diario)

Harvesting sugar cane with machetes under broiling sun is a dangerous, exhausting and miserably-paid work, which is also highly unreliable, dependent as it is on the vagaries of weather and economy.

However, that terrible toil has supported countless Colombian families. And now that it is going away, they are rebelling.

Harvesting cane by hand.

The same field which employs some 120 machete-wielding laborers can be harvested by a single harvesting machine operated by only four people. Not only that, but the machine can collect the scrap vegetation, which can then be combusted to fuel the cane processing, rather than burned uselessly in the field.

The economic tensions fed strikes recently in Risaralda, particularly on a sugar refinery of the same name, which produced more than a dozen workers and policemen injured.

'We publicly denounce that the Risaralda sugar refinery has strongly promoted mechanization of the harvest as a way to persecute the union., the Sintrainagro union declared on its website. 'We call on government agencies to intervene in favor the workers and their families, for the right to work. Replacing working with machines, leaving them no other dignified source of employment, we'll be faced with unemployment and violence, because the people's needs do not disappear in this nation where prosperity is for some, but not all.'

Where are the workers? Mechanical harvesting of sugar cane.

The union ended the strike after Risaralda agreed to its other main demand: Ending the policy of subcontracting workers, who received little pay and benefits.

But the process of mechanization, which is driven by economic forces, is not likely to stop. Mechanization will end a way of life, albeit a tough one, and expel many thousands of people out of the countryside and into city slums, where they will find few job prospects and often fall prey to crime, drugs and violence.

Such is the reality, in the name of ever-cheaper sugar and ethanol.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

High Times for Colombian Coffee

Coffee farmers offer a thumbs up. (Image: Colombian National Federation of Coffee Farmers)

While petroleum prices tumble, threatening to take Colombia's economy down with them, a more

Colombian coffee farmers are
benefiting from high world prices
and big harvests.

traditional product is enjoying a banner year.

Only a few years ago, Colombian coffee suffered a crisis: A fungus infested the crop, forcing farmers to tear out their bushes and replant them with a resistant variety specially developed by Colombian agronomists.

Today, those new plants have are producing big time - and at just the right moment. This year, the Brazilian and Indonesian crops have been hit by drought, while a fungus has attacked Central American crops.

At the same time, coffee consumption is rising, especially in Asia, removing more coffee from the world market.

The global coffee shortage means that, just as Colombia's production is peaking, so are world prices. Last November, coffee cost 107 cents per pound on world markets, according to the International Coffee Organization; this past November, the same pound sold for 162 cents.

Minister of Finance and Credit Mauricio Cardenas addresses
the recent National Coffee Farmers Congress.

Good times, however, have not prevented Colombian coffee farmers from fighting amongst themselves. At the recent national Congress of Coffee Producers, some regional associations called for the ouster of the head of the National Federation of Coffee Growers. Also at the congress, growers and exporters debated over whether the federation should continue its role as buyer of last resort across the country. Now, the federation offers to buy farmers' harvests, creating a floor for bean prices. Private buyers and exporters, naturally, would prefer to not have to compete with the troublesome Federation and be able to offer whatever price they like to the often-vulnerable small farmers.

"Eliminating the price guarantee would for the exporters be like touching heaven," a coffee farmer leader said during the congress.

Despite its good times, Colombia's coffee industry is also experiencing some troubling trends. One is the exodus of young people from rural areas to the cities. At the same time, paradoxically, coffee farms have become smaller and smaller as a family's land gets divided among several children.

Thru the 1950s and later coffee was a mainstay of Colombia's economy. Today, coffee continues to form an important part of Colombia's economy, but other exports, especially oil and coal, generate far more export income.

Coffee is farmed throughout Colombia's mountains.
(Image: Colombian National Federation of Coffee Farmers)

But, despite coffee's much smaller place in Colombia's economy today, it has much more importance than hydrocarbons in at least one sense: employment. While raw materials exports produce lots of royalties, they generate few jobs, damage the environment and often feed corruption.

Coffee farming, in contrast, employs more than a half a million Colombian families, according to the Federation of Coffee Growers. If those families average five members each, we're talking some 2.5 million people, or 5% of the Colombian people.

By putting money directly into the pockets of working families, coffee continues contributing greatly to Colombia's national well-being, another reason why high world coffee prices are a good thing.

Drink up, coffee snobs.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Farmers Plant Themselves on Plaza Bolivar

A protesting farmer, symbolically
chained, carries a flag beside
Simon Bolivar's statue
on Plaza Bolivar. 

Farmers camped out today around Simon Bolivar's statue on Plaza Bolivar, demanding that the government fulfill promises made after past agricultural strikes. The farmers say the government owes them subsidies on both the selling prices of their crops and on supplies like fertilizer and pesticides.

They also want a brake on the issuance of licenses for mines and other projects which pollute rivers and land.

Farmers are protesting and blocking roads in north-central Colombia, as you can see on this map.

One of the men I talked to at the protest farms coffee, which is bringing very high prices this year. But the farmer told me that at this time of year coffee growers have no harvest to sell, and they fear that by the time the harvest arrives prices will have dropped.

Fredy, who farms tubers, told me that the farmers will stay "as long as it takes" for the government to fulfill their demands.

'Onion growers dignity present!'

Fredy, who grows tubers, vows the farmers will stay in their camp until the government meets their demands.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Campesinos March

The march followed the 'Cumbre Agraria' - Agricultural Summit - held near Simon Bolivar Park.

Peasant farmers, students. political parties, Afro-Colombian and indigenous groups marched today demanding lots of things - and in particular that the government fulfill obligations it made to aid farmers and block cheap crop imports.

Afro-Colombian marchers.

Marchers carry a banner potraying ex-president and now Senator Alvaro Uribe as a fascist. Uribe's party, the Centro Democratico, did well in Sunday's elections, when Uribe was elected senator.

Marchers carried a flag with the portraits of Latin left icons Che Guevara and Simon Bolivar, as well as deceased Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Amazing that a man who wrecked his country is seen as a saint. 

The Soviet Union is gone, but Lenin lives on - in Bogotá.

The Marcha Patriotica is widely seen as close to the FARC guerrillas, and could be the guerrillas' vehicle for entering politics if the guerrillas and government sign a peace deal.

Protesting the 'prison crisis.'

The Union Patriotica party, often linked to the FARC guerrillas, did poorly in Sunday's parliamentary elections.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

What's Wrong With Robusta?

A sack of Colombian arabica coffee. Why not robusta, as well?

Colombia exports nearly all of the coffee it grows - and imports 80 to 90% of the coffee it drinks.

This paradoxical situation has been the source of much angst and even protests by Colombians, who feel it's wrong for the country to send its best arabica beans to rich countries, and keep only the defective beans and cheaper imports for Colombians to drink.

Freshly roasted Colombian
arabica beans.

Altho exporting that good arabica coffee makes economic sense, since the beans bring high prices internationally, importing even cheap beans does not. Most of Colombia's coffee imports - from Peru and Ecuador - but occasionally from as far away as Vietnam - are the cheaper, bitterer and smaller robusta beans. In contrast to arabica beans, which are grown in small plots at high altitude, generally under tree cover, robusta beans grow in corn-style monocultures at lower altitudes. Arabica is harvested by hand, robusta with machines. Robusta, as its name suggests, is hardier and more resistant to diseases. The beans also contain about twice as much caffeine and have a stronger, harsher taste.

Some other coffee producing nations, particularly Brazil, grow both the arabica and robusta varieties.

Regions of Colombia where arabica
coffee is cultivated.
(Image: Cafe de Colombia)

At a recent national meeting, Colombian coffee growers rejected a proposal for the country to plant robusta beans.

"We're against robusta," Marcelo Salazar, a coffee planters' representative from Caldas Department, told Reuters. "It doesn't require much labor, it's much cheaper in the international market...and doesn't reflect the quality of Colombian coffee."

It's true that Colombia, the world's fourth-largest coffee producer, has built its reputation for good coffee by planting expensive, high-quality beans. And that solid reputation deserves to be protected.

Samples of 'green' and roasted Colombian arabica beans.
The piles on the left are cheap beans for the domestic
market; on the right are export quality beans.

But robusta and arabica beans are so different in how and where they are grown and in their markets and uses, that they might as well be considered different crops.

Chains like Starbucks, which plans to open cafes in Colombia next year, mix arabica beans for their taste and quality with robusta beans for their higher caffeine content. When Starbucks lands in Colombia, it will be importing robusta.

Arabica and robusta coffee beans.
(Photo: Whole Latte Love)

Robusta could be planted on Colombia's Llanos Orientales - the low elevation Eastern Plains region - far from the mountains where arabica grows. To protect Colombian coffee's international image, the robusta could be packaged differently, clearly marked 'robusta' and without the title 'Cafe de Colombia' label. And, the robusta wouldn't even have to be exported. They could plant only enough to replace what's now imported, providing more jobs and income at home.

But this is a great example of vested interests at work. At the recent meeting arabica coffee farmers were eager to denounce the supposed threat of that evil robusta bean. No robusta coffee farmers were there to sing their bean's praises simply because they don't exist in Colombia. And, the way things are going, they probably never will.



By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Farmers are Back on the March.

Hundreds of farmers crowded Ave. Septima today.

Campesino farmers staged another march today pleading for more government assistance. The farmers accuse the government of not fulfilling promises it made after the farmers' huge marches of a few months ago.

With all of this pleading and begging, it's a bit ironic that the farmers call their movement 'Dignidad.'

For all of their deservingness, subsidizing farmers is not a sustainable solution, since subsidies only generate more subsidies and are therefore sooner or late unsustainable.

'Agriculture shafted by Santos.'

'President Santos no more lies.'

This guy was giving away small, tasty apricots.

'Land for Colombians, not for foreigners.' This may refer to cases in which foreign multinataionls bought up huge stretches of agricultural land using a very dubious legal maneuver. The government has taken no action on the cases.

The ruana has come to symbolize the difficulties of humble, hard-working Colombians.

'No to free trade agreements.' The marchers blame imported agricultural products for forcing down prices. However, according to what I've read only a tiny proportion of Colombia's fruits and vegetables are imported. However, under current trade agreements that number will grow - inevitably impacting farmers in the future.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours