Cocoa gains ground in the Colombian coffee axis due to the precarious coffee situation

For decades, the Colombian Coffee Axis has been one of the main economic drivers for hosting one of Colombia’s star products, coffee. Currently, however, the coffee crisis is gradually giving way to another crop: cocoa.

On the Maracay farm, one of the numerous agricultural estates in this mountainous area, located in the Colombian departments of Caldas, Risaralda and Quindío, they surprisingly do not grow coffee.

In this private estate you can see numerous cocoa plants no more than three meters long along a downhill path that nature lovers can enjoy. On the sides of the path, the field assistants delicately treat the plants with the bitter fruits.

The continuous exchange of sun and rain in the skies of the coffee hub throughout the year creates a unique place for the development of cocoa and its harvest, as it is also for other crops such as coffee.

When the cocoa is picked from the plant, the next step is the fermentation process, which lasts five days and in which “You have to stir the cocoa so that it doesn’t ferment badly”explains to EFE one of the field assistants of this farm, Víctor Zambrano, located in the department of Risaralda, on the outskirts of its capital, Pereira.

The last step of processing is drying, which is carried out in wooden boxes inside a greenhouse that has a temperature so high that it is difficult for a human to withstand.

The coffee situation worsens

The coffee situation began to worsen in the 1990s with the arrival of rust, a disease that arrived from coffee growers who moved from one city to another and caused the coffee plants to have a brown color that made them rotting, so that Colombia went from being the first world producer to number twelve.

Given the drop in prices and the difficulty of growing crops – due to rust, other diseases or inclement weather -, and because coffee continues to be one of the most popular drinks, coffee growers are increasingly dedicating themselves to the world of coffee. barista

Now on the Risaralda farms it is increasingly common for coffee growers to offer tastings of different coffees arranged on the table explaining, as if they were teachers, the smells and flavors of this seed, keys to determining its quality.

““A coffee grower is earning approximately 150,000 pesos (38 dollars or 35 euros) a week”the manager of Café Tercer Cielo, Jackson García, tells EFE about the precariousness of a crop suitable for the coffee region due to its climate. “The country has to realize the need for support so that the peasant does not grow old without having his basic needs”he points out.

From the union they ask for more aid from a Government that is leaving aside this key sector in the Colombian economy because the only existing regulation is to pay taxes on exports and there is no bonus for those who are producing.

“The main problem is that there is no labor for the collection, the people who did it were elderly and there is no generational change”explains García.

Cocoa bursts in strongly

The precarious situation of coffee is causing many coffee farmers to migrate to other crops, and one of them is cocoa, which is progressively gaining value in the land of coffee.

“More and more people are migrating to cocoa cultivation to the detriment of coffee,” The tour guide through the Maracay farm, Alejandra Sanint, tells EFE, highlighting that in Colombia there are around 60,000 small cocoa-producing families (less than three cultivated hectares), an insufficient amount to export.

Although there are normally two harvest seasons a year, at Hacienda Maracay “It is reviewed every 15 or 20 days because there is a very high production thanks to the climate”says Zambrano.

Although the investment in cocoa is long-term because it does not begin to produce until three years after planting, these bushes produce for around thirty years.

However, cocoa, which is native to the upper Colombian Amazon, still requires a lot of research and development for it to become profitable.

Source: EFE