Importing a Bad Idea

Corn ethanol -
an irrational fantasy.

Lots of studies have shown that converting corn into ethanol is a bad idea, both economically and environmentally. It only makes sense politically in the United States, where the road to the presidency runs through Iowa - corn country.

Corn ethanol doesn't make environmental sense because the energy and ingredients used to make it - seeds, fuel, fertilizer, etc. - generate more climate change gases than the reduction in gases obtained by using less petroleum when ethanol is mixed into fuel. Also, when corn is turned into fuel rather than eaten, land someplace else in the world may be deforested to plant more food crops.

But Colombia may soon import that unenvironmental and

Cars pig out on food that
could feed people.

unecological ethanol from the U.S., because it's cheaper than home-grown sugar cane ethanol. U.S. corn ethanol is only cheaper because of absurd subsidies the U.S. government pays to farmers. And, shipping the ethanol across the U.S. and the Gulf of Mexico will only make it an even worse deal economically and environmentally.

And, while importing foreign ethanol may be cheaper, it will come as a cost to Colombia's sugar cane industry, which is already complaining that this will hurt their business and cost jobs.

Infographic: Food or Fuel.com

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

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