In the Grinder - Our Daily Coffee Weblog

Written by Andrew:

Last month I travelled to Colombia to visit a group of producers in the Sierra Madre de Santa Marta region in the North of the country and then down to the South, in the State of Huila, to visit some farms in San Augustin.

It was raining when I arrived in Santa Marta and rained  most of the ten days I was in Colombia. Rain was the overriding theme of the trip and as you know, the culprit behind the Colombian coffee woes of the last few years. If you remember last year’s fall harvest was plagued by unseasonable rains that compromised the harvest and impacted flowering for the Spring crop. This was the reason behind Colombia’s harvest going from 11Million bags to 8.1Million bags.

The next phase of this crisis was other washed mild coffees getting vacuumed up to fill the 3 Million bag hole left by the Colombian shortage and their differentials climbing by some .30 cents.  Phase three was the C market rallying from $1.43 a year ago to $2.34 today based on a shortage of washed milds. F.O. Licht has predicted this year’ Colombian crop to be 9.6M bags which is better than last year, but not back to traditional levels. So apparently, the crisis continues.

Colombia has a complex harvest schedule with most regions having two harvests; the main in the North happens in the Fall and the Mitaca in the spring. That schedule is reversed in the Southern areas. There is always rain during the harvest which presents a drying challenge but producers are industrious in pursuit of top quality.

Oftentimes you see sun in the morning until the clouds roll across the mountains and the drying coffee has to be covered up. High quality producers use a parabolic, semi-domed plastic cover while commercial producers deliver wet cherries.  With a differential of 1.00 and a $2.00 C market. Many producers are content to deliver wet pergamino to a commercial mill and be done with it. Only producers with a passion for quality and a commitment for the long term are willing to do the extra work.

Here is a photo from a producers in San Augustine using raised beds under a parabolic drier. Nice.

The Kogi are a group of indigenous people living in the Sierra Madres that happen to produce coffee and invited me to visit and discuss ways of commercializing their coffee in order to generate funds to buy back the ancestral lands that have been taken from them over the last couple centuries. The Kogi have been living independently and in harmony with the world for over 400 years on this mountain. There is a fascinating National Geographic article on these people from 2004 and a link here to an overview: