Colombia is a fantastic coffee producing country with wide ranging terroir and varietals. Although best known for the infamous Juan Valdez and generic cupping profiles there are many thousands of hard working producers who are changing the face of Colombian coffee to one of ultra high quality microlots.
It is believed that the first coffee seeds arrived to the American continent thanks to the French and Dutch. The French introduced them to their colonies (Guyana and Martinique) at the end of the seventeenth century, while the Dutch introduced them to Surinam in 1714. Coffee was first introduced to Colombia in 1723, presumably thanks to Jesuit priests that brought the seeds from Venezuela.
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The first information about coffee growing in Colombia dates from 1732. It is said that the first coffee trees were grown in the Jesuit Seminar of Popayán (Cauca) and later in 1741 in the Provinces of Santa Marta and Riohacha. The first commercial plantations date from the end of the eighteen-century in the departments of Santander and Boyaca, and later in the hills surrounding Medellin.
For many decades Colombia was the world’s second leading producer of coffee behind Brazil. Recently, Vietnam surpassed Colombia in coffee exports to take the number two seat and move Colombia into a close third. However, the old adage of quality over quantity certainly applies here.
During most of the 1990’s and the first years of this century prices were below the costs of production. This situation obliged a lot of growers to give up on coffee or to decrease their living standards. Coffee growing regions endured high levels of unemployment, which brought insecurity and violence to regions that before were considered the safest and most prosperous in the country. Some coffee growers even resorted to grow illegal crops.
Even though today coffee exports only represent roughly 10% of Colombia’s total exports by value, it is still a very important segment of the economy. There are over 500 thousand coffee growing families, which together own approximately 870 thousand coffee hectares and produce an average of 11 millions coffee bags per year. Of these five hundred thousand families, 64% are small producers (with less than 1.5 hectares of coffee). All coffee grown in Colombia is manually harvested to select only ripe (red) beans. To harvest one hectare of coffee at least 15 experienced coffee pickers are necessary. Each of these pickers will harvest 90 to 150 kg of cherry each day, working from dawn to dusk. Since most of Colombia’s coffee is grown on hills, picking ripe cherries is not an easy task.
Most regions in Colombia have two harvests every year, one main crop and another usually smaller one called mitaca or traviesa (fly-crop). Almost all coffee producing regions have two harvests, with the exception of three, which are Santander, Boyaca and Sierra Nevada, which only have one harvest during the second semester of the year. Usually the first semester harvest begins in April and ends in July, while the second semester harvest begins in September and ends in December.
