The positive agricultural face of one of the most fertile countries on earth is the vast and important coffee industry of Colombia. It is part of the national character and something that fortunately puts a much more positive spin on Colombia’s place in global society. It also is an essential backbone to Colombia’s internal agricultural infrastructure; an export product in which they lead the world in quality and once were a strong second in the world in volume. They have lost their second spot as they have not allowed capitalism to dictate their approach to production. Brazil and Vietnam, a relatively new entrant into the mass market, now dominate producing vast quantaties of the more robust version of the plant, harvesting with machines and manual strip picking; this has driven down the price of coffee even though world consumption continues to grow. The Colombian coffee producers are not driven by a few super farms, with the central business model of high investment and high volume, instead they are driven by families who have handed down single digit hectares from generation to generation, people drying their coffee on laid out plastic at the edge of highways. There are of course some larger outfits of around 100 hectares plus, but they are few and far between. It is neighbor helping neighbor and in the farm I just visited a solitary man trying to sustain himself and the small community around him with his 13 hectares of coffee bushels, nestled in the Santandarian hillside.
Once we left the tarmac road around 1 hour out of Bucaramanga, the capital of Santander, we began to climb up. The best conditions for coffee are around 1500 metres above sea level and we were starting from around 500 metres. The unmade road followed the serpent like river, twisting from left to right. Santander is better known for its cacao production than its coffee and this was evident as the beautiful husks of red, purple and yellow hues could be seen populating the roadside, all the way up until we were near our final destination. Other states in Colombia are more productive when it comes to coffee simply because they have vast tracts of land at the desired altitude, often you find coffee growing in the middle of the mountain range but here is was almost at the top. As we arrived at the property there was a small sign about sustainability and the Rainforest accreditation. The farm does not have a grand entrance, in fact quite the opposite, a flimsy barb wired gate that on unhooking collapses like a rag doll to the floor. As you enter you are hit with the strong pungent smell of the fermentation, a smell you find in the distilleries and vineyards of the world where other grains and grapes are being processed. The farmhouse is simple, perched on the mountainside with a view to the seemingly infinite mountain range and beyond.
Apart from some family smallholdings our host Campo Elias is managing the only significant volume of plants in the area; he has the ideal name for any farmer, his name does what it says on the tin!! Born in the hotter area of Socorro, Santander a colonial town on the main highway out from Bogota, Campo Elias studied in Bogotá, where he met my wife’s aunt, which 40 years or so later led to me coming to his farm. With many of his work force barely literate Campo Elias stands out in his community as a learned and wise figure. He is though with his learning a very humble man, living mostly alone with much time to reflect on society and how it is being changed by technology. He is an agricultural journeyman who has owned and run cattle ranches in Los Lllanos, Meta, tried his hand with an orange orchard and finally ended up with an Arabica coffee farm which he started around 10 years ago. On our first night we spent a good hour discussing the vampires that he fought off many years ago on the hot plains of Meta where he managed hundreds if not thousands of cattle. Initially this confused me, thinking that he was a little off the wall as he insisted the Mexicans had the most vampires, which I questioned - surely there are more in Transylvania. Then finally the word bat was introduced into the conversation which made me more at ease that I was not going to be whisked away that night by any foul play from the local ghouls. It was fascinating to hear how in the half moonlight they would wait for the bat to strike, then it would be full and unable to fly for a minute or so, at which point they would try and capture it and force poison upon it. Then it would return to its resting place, to share some of its feast with other bats, thus wiping a few out to reduce the size of the colony. The main risk from the bat was not killing the cow but giving it rabies and for that reason it was not a welcome visitor.
It was not the menace of vampire bats that led Campo to his current vocation, but more his desire to change his habitual climate. The cattle business is generally managed on the flat and that means in Colombia the low-lying plains and not in the mountains, which in turn means pretty hot without much breeze. His stepping-stone to the coffee farm was a number of years with an orange grove a little cooler but not much. Finally opting for the cooler climes of coffee he is able to enjoy warmish days and fresh nights. He lives alone which gives him ample time in the evenings often sitting in the darkness listening to the hum of the machine behind him that is drying out the coffee. The standard coffee bean that is sold to the bulk shippers through the Colombian Confederation of Coffee Producers does not need to be treated that well. It can be flung on the floor, trodden on, dried in a machine and bagged up without losing much of its commercial value. The price and livelihoods of the Colombian farmers and their workers is moderated by two factors, the NYSE price for 1lb of coffee, under contract C and the rise and fall of the value of the Colombia peso; its ironic that the US who produces no coffee dictates the price using the ancient concept of the lb (pound) when the whole world is weighing their product in kilos. The better beans will make it into the premium blends found on the world’s supermarkets and the lesser quality ones will end up as coffee granules inside Nestle jars. Most of the worst beans of all won’t even leave the country, you are allowed about 2% of those in each 125 kg sack, they end inside the cups of the majority of Colombian coffee drinkers, ironic, but most Colombians do not consume the good quality coffee!
One of the many miracles of Campo Elias is the calmness in which he runs his simple production. He orders everything using small scrappy notebooks, keeping count of amounts, drawing a line through names and numbers when pickers are finally paid for their voumne based work. He does not try and force the community to do more or less, he does not get frustrated by the natural psyche of human behavior which is animated when they know the days harvest will be in the most abundant areas where they can easily pick 120-150 kilos and is less enthusiastic when it is the day of the older plants with beans almost out of reach and sparsely littered around a rambling bush. On the good days 50 or so people will show up yielding 6000 kilos in one day, but on other days 1000 kilos will be the reward as interest and earning potential wanes. Many of the workers come from the small village a 20-minute walk from the fields. As well as labor they can offer vehicles to move the heavy sacks from the more distant corners of estate, transport comes in the form of jeeps but also the donkey is paid 10 bucks a day for his efforts. Oddly for an estate owner Campo Elias does not own any of his own vehicles, he neither keeps livestock; only 3 cats and 2 dogs are there to accompany him through the cool nights.
Surrounded by progress and competition from the outside world, inside the inner workings of Campo Elias’ life he is content with his approach to production, which compliments his philosophies. He believes, probably wrongly, that the genetic revolution has reached a point from which it cannot go further. He sees the writing on the wall with over production and techniques that are driven by capitalism to drive down prices and commoditize everything to the point that is unnatural, a force against nature rather than working with it. His risk taking though is at a minimum, he cultivates mostly the hybrid version of the Arabica called Castillo, it is much more durable that other sub species, but he does have a small amount of Bourban, a species that produces a yellow fruit instead of the standard red berry. It is interesting as the fruits are called cherries which makes sense as most are red, but loses its meaning a little when the final product is the brownish yellow Bourban. Campo has implemented the basic machinery required to automate the production of volume. He has a machine to strip the husk from the fruit and then the machine to dry it. This allows him to process close to 400-500 kilos a day in the high season, which is essential to avoid over fermentation or any rotting of the beans. The machines become the mini obsession in the harvest season as any damage can have catastrophic effects, they have become his surrogate children that he has to nurture each day. Robinson, who is ever present in the processing of the coffee but also checking on the machines, aids him in this task. Any major damage could be a few days without production as a 4 hour return trip could be needed to get parts or things repaired, so an unaccpetable minimum of one day will always be lost.
The irony of the Colombian market is that in comparison to its volume rivals of Brazil and Vietnam which are both miles out in front these days, the Colombian production technique of picking, which not only has one of the highest labor costs is one of the more precise that is around. Traditionally each plant is picked a number of times in each harvest and as the ripe fruits are dropping from the bushes the flowers for the next season are seen on the same branch. They employ a classical harmony of the human taking what is ripe, returning a few weeks later for the other fruits and being careful not to damage the leaves and flowers so the next bi-annual harvest will be as strong as possible; this practice is not universally shared. That coupled with the more highly prized production of the Arabica and not the Robusta gives the Colombian product a slight edge on price. However the majority of coffee is not treated that well and Colombian volume is driven by small holders where there is not enough central organization to really produce a super premium product en masse as they process their beans any which way they can without any significant quality control. Entering the market however is the new marketing obsession for “single origin” products. This is allowing Campo to work with his son Daniel and his friend Andres, a man hoping to revolutionize the coffee market one farm at a time.
Andres visits the farm once a month and works with a number of women to separate out the higher quality beans. Everything is then dried in trays stationed above the ground and covered by plastic roofs assembled in the style of an open greenhouse; this is in contrast to the standard throw everything in one bucket and sweep it around on the floor and in Campo’s case throw it in the drier for half a day. The natural drying in trays has to reduce the humidity from around 30-40% to 10%, this takes about 2 weeks, at which point the selection process begins again as the drying area is cleared away with the bagged up beans, ready for the next batch. The selected beans account for about 30% of the production of the crop, so 30% are really truly premium, handled with care and shipped with love by air to a number of US based roasters. The premium value for this coffee is around 30-40% higher however a good deal of the margin is wiped out by the cost of the handpicked selection process and the shipping. With more volume from other farms Andres hopes to get enough to cover the investment in logistics for sea shipping where the minimum required is to fill a full container, at the moment he doesnt have that volume. He also hopes to “age” the coffee once it is sacked up. The premium approach does not kill off the embryo of the bean so it can have an extended life, enriching its flavor, the traditional process is murdering the embryo and therefore losing some of the delicacy of the flavor.
Coming from the outside world looking in, I can only see a natural healthy beauty to the approach taken by Campo and the surrounding villagers. The work is not back breaking, the plants are the perfect height to pick the fruit. In the fields are tens of different species of birds flying around, all with different songs or intonations, adorned with pretty colors that cover most of the chromatic range of the rainbow. The days can be long and especially arduous when it rains as you slip and slide around the hillside moving from bush to bush. Spirits are kept high as yodeling calls are made from one picker to the next, sometimes ten metres away sometimes hundreds of metres away. As they shout little in jokes to each other, make comments about food, being hungry, being faster or slower than someone else, the day passes more quickly. From working only half a day my hands were not cut or scratched which can be common with farm work. I remember once just rolling some bails of hay in New Zealand, with each bail full of thistles and other prickly plants after just a few hours it was agony. There are some biting insects and stinging caterpillars that might smart if you graze them but generally the workers are well wrapped up with only their hands and faces exposed. The toughest part for me was putting only 30 kilos on my shoulders and walking up out of the fields, feeling like you are in the world’s strongest man competition trying to get your load to the finish line. Exhausted I made it, but for the hardened farm hand this is not such an odyssey as most carry sacks of 60k twice a day in order to make a reasonable wage for their efforts.
The coffee industry is protected by the government in Colombia. It is responsible for the livelihood of more than 500,000 families so if it were to diminish it would have a serious social impact. The cost of production of each load of 125kg is around 700.000 Colombian pesos and below this point the government will subsidize the price to ensure that most decently managed operations do not go under. The price today for the regular quality product is around 820.000but as recently as 2011 it was as high as 1.1 million pesos, a time when the margins were more than healthy. This you have to realize is not about a big fat owner making more money in the good times, but whole communities who even though they may be working several months for someone like Campo will also have their own production of a hectare or two. Despite the safety net for the industry as a whole the majority of families themselves are not inside the common social structures that provide guaranteed health care and pensions. Your best bet for a pension in the Colombian countryside is to have children as they will look after their parents in their autumn years. Whilst everything has fragility in nature, Colombians are taking a sustainable approach to coffee agriculture, there is the risk of a sweeping plague or international global changes that can creep up and destroy their way of life, but for now it is stable. The coffee plant offers a dignified, hard working and fulfilling life. People are paid a living wage, nothing to allow them two package holidays, a car or even a washing machine, but enough to maintain a family and a house set on spectacular landscape accompanied by incredibly varied bird song morning to night. With Campo Elias a man a who cares more about the society around him than for himself, you hope that this small part of the mountains in Santander can find a niche with its new production of single origin, specialty coffee, so that the world that is so far away can get a sense of the wonder a beauty every time they take a sip of their coffee. If you are what you eat, surely you would be a better person if you knew where what you consume comes from and how globalization with sustainable, hand picked products, managed with care and love can not only change your consumption habits but support the lives of honest, happy folk, yodeling in the fields thousands on miles away.
