Colombian Economy and a Shortage of Coffee Pickers

When we think about the quality of regular or healthy organic coffee we usually think about sustainable agriculture, certification and coffee varieties. As a rule the state of the economy does not come to mind. Nevertheless, this article is about the Colombian economy and a shortage of coffee pickers. Bloomberg Business writes that coffee workers quit to build Colombian highways leaving coffee to rot during the harvest season.

Colombian coffee growers face soaring labor costs and harvesting delays as pickers leave for better-paid construction jobs.

Producers of the famed Arabica beans brewed by companies including Starbucks Corp. are paying workers twice what they received two years ago. Still, the labor shortages are leaving coffee beans on trees longer, allowing them to fall to the ground, where beetles can bore into the cherries.

“For every three workers we need, we have two,” said Juan David Rendon, head of the Andes Coffee Cooperative, whose members have about 35,000 hectares (86,000 acres). “Infrastructure in Colombia has been demanding a lot of manpower.”

The source of this dilemma lies in the world economy and especially the USA and China. The US has developed fracking technology to extract more and more oil and natural gas. And the Chinese economy has slowed significantly. The problem for Colombia is that it is an oil exporter and oil prices have fallen by half over the last year. According to Beta, Colombia uses hydroelectric power for its electricity and exports most of its oil.

In recent years, Colombia has increased its importance as an energy producer in the Western Hemisphere. Colombia is currently the third-largest oil producer in Latin America and is the seventh-largest crude exporter to the United States. Colombia is also the largest coal producer in South America.

The Colombian peso has fallen from 1,800 to the dollar to 3,000 to the dollar and jobs in the oil sector are getting hard to find. The Colombian government is doing what the USA, Europe, China and others are doing. They are creating jobs by improving infrastructure. In this case Colombia is building about 1,500 of roads through mountainous terrain. These jobs pay better than picking coffee and at least for the duration of these projects the jobs are year-round rather than season like in the coffee industry. This is relationship between the Colombian economy and shortage of coffee pickers.

Fewer Pickers and More Brocca

Brocca is an infestation of coffee beans by the coffee borer beetle. Not only are coffee beans not being harvested in time but when they fall to the ground the coffee borer beetles move in.

A major threat to coffee crops in various locations throughout the world is the coffee borer beetle. Hypothenemus hampei, its scientific name, is a small beetle native to Angola in Southern Africa. Over the 20th century is spread to the Americas and to Hawaii. The coffee borer beetle is threat to coffee crops wherever it is found. In the Latin American regions where the pest if found it goes by the names barrenador del café, gorgojo del café and broca del café. Infestation spread via the inadvertent transport of infected beans. The primary way to continue to produce healthy organic coffee when there is an infestation is to hand sort the bean and dry promptly after picking.

The problem, of course, is that if you do not have enough pickers because they are working on highway construction, you also do not have enough people to sort the beans and throw out the infected ones. Then when you store the beans prior to transport the infection spreads!




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