Coffee Region

The Colombian Coffee-Growers Axis / Crossroads (in spanish: Eje cafetero) is a part of the Colombian 'PAISA' region which is famous for growing and producing the majority of the Colombian coffee that many of us are familiar with; considered by some to be the best coffee in the world.

Three of the departments in this area: 'Caldas', 'Quindio' and 'Risaralda' are among the smallest departments in Colombia with a total combined area of 13873 km² (5356 mi²), about 1.2% of Colombia's territory. And, the combined population of the region is approximately 2,291,195 (2005 census).

Colombian Coffee is a protected designation of origin granted by the European Union (September 2007) that applies to the coffee produced in Colombia. Colombian coffee has been recognized worldwide as having a high quality and distinctive taste. The main importers of Colombian coffee are the United States, Germany, France, Japan and Italy.

HISTORY

Historical data indicates that the Jesuits brought coffee seeds to South America with them circa 1730, but there are different versions of this. Tradition says that the coffee seeds were brought by a traveler from Guyana who passed through Venezuela before reaching Colombia. The oldest written testimony of the presence of coffee in Colombia is attributed to a Jesuit priest, Jose Gumilla. In his book The Orinoco Illustrated (1730), he registered the presence of coffee in the mission of Saint Teresa of Tabajé, near where the Meta river empties into the Orinoco. Further testimony comes from the archbishop-viceroy Caballero y Gongora (1787), who registered the presence of the crop in the north east of the country near Giron (Santander) and Muzo (Boyaca) in a report that he provided to the Spanish authorities.

The first coffee crops were planted in the eastern part of the country. In 1835 the first commercial production was registered with 2,560 green coffee bags that were exported from the port of Cucuta, near the border with Venezuela. A priest named Francisco Romero is attributed to have been very influential in the propagation of the crop in the northeast region of the country. After hearing the confessions of the parishioners of the town of Salazar de las Palmas, he required as penance the cultivation of coffee. Coffee became established in the departments of Santander and North Santander, Cundinamarca, Antioquia and the historic region of Caldas.

Despite these early developments, the consolidation of coffee as a Colombian export did not come about until the second half of the 19th century. The great expansion that the world economy underwent at that time allowed Colombian landowners to find attractive opportunities in international markets. Little by little, the United States became the most important consumer of coffee in the world, while Germany and France became the most important markets in Europe.

The then large Colombian landowners had already tried to exploit the new opportunities that the expansion of the international markets offered. Between 1850 and 1857 the country experienced a significant increase in tobacco and quinine exports, and thereafter leather and live cattle. These early efforts in the export of agricultural commodities turned out to be too fragile; they, in fact, were only reactionary attempts to find the greatest profitability from the high international prices of the time, rather than attempts to create a solid and diversified export platform. The production of these sectors went into period of decline when the respective bonanza of their international prices terminated, hence a true industrial consolidation was avoided.

With the fall of international prices, that registered the transition from the 19th to the 20th century, the profitability of the large estates plummeted. As if this was not enough, the Thousand Days War, which took place during the first years of the new century, also had a negative affect on these landowners making it impossible for them to maintain their plantations in good condition. Moreover, these landowners had incurred large amounts of foreign debt, in an effort to further develop their plantations, which finally ruined them. The coffee estates of Santander and North Santander entered into crisis and the estates of Cundinamarca and Antioquia stalled.

The crisis that affected the large estates brought with it one of the most significant changes to the Colombian coffee industry. Since 1875 the number of small coffee producers had begun to grow in Santander as well as in some regions of Antioquia and in the region referred to as Viejo (or Old) Caldas. In the first decades of the 20th century a new model to develop coffee exports based on the rural economy had already been consolidated, supported by internal migration and the colonization of new territories in the centre and western regions of the country, principally in the departments of Antioquia, Caldas, Valle and in the northern part of Tolima. Both the expansion of this new coffee model and the crisis that affected the large estates allowed the western regions of Colombia to take the lead in the development of the coffee industry in the country.

This transformation was very favourable to the owners of the small coffee estates that were entering the coffee market. The cultivation of coffee was a very attractive option for local farmers as it offered the possibility of making permanent and intensive use of the land. Coffee offered the possibility of having an intense agriculture, without major technical requirements and without sacrificing the cultivation of subsistence crops, thus generating the conditions for the expansion of a new coffee culture, dominated by small farms.

Although this new breed of coffee farmers demonstrated a significant capacity to grow their businesses on the margins of current international prices, Colombia itself did not demonstrate enough dynamism in the marketing of this product on the global markets. However, between 1905 and 1935, the coffee industry in Colombia did start to grow dynamically thanks to the vision and long term policies derived from the creation of the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia (FNC) in 1927. The union of local farmers and small producers around the Federation has allowed them to confront and overcome logistical and commercial difficulties that would not have been possible individually.

With time, and through the research made at Cenicafe, founded in 1938, as well as the FNC’s ‘Agricultural Extension Service’ and improved cultivation systems, more efficient spatial patterns were developed that permitted the differentiation of the product and supported the imporovement of its quality.

Currently, the Coffee territories in Colombia include all of the mountain ranges and other mountainous regions in the country, and generates income for over 500,000 coffee farming families.

Coffee Region

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