Manizales is far too complicated for someone driving a motorbike arriving after a 10 hour ride on dirt mountain roads. I was lost for 45 minutes in a 3km square radius while looking for the Mountain House Hostal. After finding it I spent the night and decided to leave in the morning for a ‘coffee tour’ – a tour of a coffee farm along with the processing of the beans to the point of export. The following, as a result of my mediocre Spanish abilities, may contains a multitude of factual errors.
Coffee Plantations, Chinchina, Colombia
Structure of the industry in Colombia
The workers and coffee farm (finca) owners both have collectives that represent their interests. These include setting working conditions, a wage (dependent on world market coffee prices), and an incentive system based on individual performance in terms of picking only ripe beans. Seeds for the plants are sourced from the government coffee plant lab where new disease, pest, and weather resistant strains are developed. The reasons given are that a variety of strains are needed to avoid pests or weather affecting the entire farm’s crop or the entire industry.
Fair Trade is not used by the Colombian cooperatives who argue their standards are above those of fair trade – this is accepted by buyers worldwide according to my guide. Pesticides are not permitted by the cooperatives as they pollute the flavour and aroma of the beans. Herbicides are used around the base of the plant to suppress competing plants. Water restrictions and composting of waste husks and bean juice is mandated by the cooperatives.
The African Coffee War
An insect imported from Africa began affecting the Colombian crop in ~1995 by burrowing into a ripening coffee seed and then laying eggs, resulting in the seed rotting and dropping from the bush. This apparently decimated the Colombian coffee crop until a wasp, also from Africa, was introduced that predates on the unwanted insect. Currently the insect decimates about 15% of the beans, these are then used for domestic consumption or for instant coffee sold internationally.
Sewing The Seeds
The latest strains are bought from the government laboratory and planted in sand. Apparently this promotes the development of a single root, the desired outcome to produce a tall productive plant. The plants are left in the sand for several months, first sprouting a shoot with the seed at it’s top which then breaks open into two butterfly shaped wide leaves (known as the ‘butterfly’ stage). Seedlings with curved or multiple root branches are discard. At this point they are transplanted into individual plastic bags of fertilized earth and put in the open where they are watered – unlike plants already put in the ground in the plantation.
Poor root structure coffee plant
Coffee plant nursery
Managing The Crop
After being planted and maturing, certain plants known as ‘machos’ do not grow tall with good branch and leaf separation as desired, but instead are short and squat with many leaves too close together to develop a good harvest of beans. The others grow to about two meters tall and produce beans ripening all year round at different stages within the same bunch. Plants are pruned usually by cutting them at the base of the plant promoting new shoots developing from the trunk – the best one or two of these is left while the other shoots are sacrificed. From a mature plant, about 7 years or harvesting and pruning is possible before the plant is considered too old and unproductive and is replaced.
Ripening Beans
Coffee Plants
Prior to the development of the newer Colombian-created strains the coffee and cacoa plants were used symbiotically. The cacoa plants provided shade for the coffee plants which didn’t thrive under direct sun. Added benefits were the retention of soil on the steep slopes where the coffee was grown. At the Hacienda Guayabal they had converted entirely to the newer strain and there was little in the way of shade trees covering the slopes. It wasn’t clear what affect this has had on erosion there.
Harvesting The Beans
The workers get paid under 2,000 pesos (~ $1 USD) per kilo of ripe (red or yellow) beans collected. They seem to average about 20 kilos per day. In perspective, a hostal dormitory bed in a Colombian town costs 20,000 pesos. They collect the beans in sacks made from the fibres of the Agave cactus (the same plant used to make tequila and mescal in Mexico) until they are full where they empty them into large 10 kilo bags. When the bags are full they are brought to the ‘beneficio’ house where they are weighed and graded for quality by a collective official. The official determines if the quality of the work (10% unripe beans gets a reprimand or an order to undergo retraining), 5% unripe beans is acceptable, and under 5% leads to a bonus for the worker.
Unripe beans and seeds infected with African insect
Separating the wheat from the chaff
In the ‘beneficio’ house (where the benefits of the work on the farm are realized) the beans are dropped into a large funnel-silo that feeds them into a machine (in red and green) that pops the two seeds from their casing and drops the casing into a corkscrew that takes the casings to a separate building where they are composted. The conjoined machine (in blue) then takes the beans and using three litres of water rubs the beans to remove the sweet juice that coats them. This juice contaminates water supplies and so is required by the government to be composted along with the casings.
Modern shelling and washing machine
Composting husks
The cleaned beans are then put in a large water tank where the poorer quality less-dense beans float and can been drawn off the top of the water through a pipe and strainer bucket. The remaining ones are then passed through a series of canals with obstructions a various stages to trap the remaining beans that may only partially float.
Separating the wheat from the chaff (bad beans float)
Preparing for export
The beans are then moved into a large kiln where they are dried with air at 55 degrees celcius alternately blown from above and below for several hours.
Baking quality beans
After they are dried they are either sold as green beans or whole (with the husk intact). Most of the money from coffee is made between the receiving the green beans and selling them after roasting. The Colombians tried roasting the beans and vacumn packing them for export but according to my guide (Alejandro), the coffee consuming countries quickly realized that the flavour of the coffee quickly degrades after roasting and preferred to buy the green beans (which can be stored for up to 8 months without degradation).
Asides
The tour was at Hacienda Guayabal, $20,000 pesos – two hours, $10,000 pesos for a well prepared lunch. Good guide – Alejandro.
The guide explained that Americans seemed the most ignorant about coffee – many asking if the beans were espresso beans.
Italians make the best preparation of the coffee – guide.
Some visitors to the hacienda do not even like coffee – much to the Alejandro’s amusement.
Colombian coffee is sweet and used when buying ‘blends’ to soften the bitterness of the less expensive coffee sourced from Vietnam, Ethiopia, and El Salvador.
Land on coffee farms in the Eje Cafetero region is cheaper than equivalent fallow land because coffee prices fluctuate too much and other crops or cattle farming is a more reliable return on the investment in the land.
Chinchina, Eje Cafetero, Caldas, Colombia
|
Chinchina, Eje Cafetero, Caldas, Colombia
|
Chinchina, Eje Cafetero, Caldas, Colombia
|
Chinchina, Eje Cafetero, Caldas, Colombia
|
Chinchina, Eje Cafetero, Caldas, Colombia
|
Chinchina, Eje Cafetero, Caldas, Colombia
|
Poor root structure coffee plant
|
Ripening Beans
|
Coffee Plants
|
Birds of Paradise – Banana Family (invasive)
|
Birds of Paradise – Banana Family (invasive)
|
Composting husks and juice
|
Composting husks
|
Unripe beans and seeds infected with African insect
|
Toxic red banana-type fruit
|
Coffee plant nursery
|
Modern shelling and washing machine
|
Separating the wheat from the chaff
|
More quality separation by floatation
|
Baking quality beans
|
Small shelling machine
|
Small roasting machine
|
Bathing bird
|
Bathing bird
|
Bathing bird
|
Farm out-building
|
Outside Salento, Colombia
|
Outside Salento, Colombia
|
Outside Salento, Colombia
|
