Colombian Coffee … From Past to Present

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. 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.

Commercial Cultivation

In the second half of the nineteenth century, a few years after Colombia’s independence from Spain, coffee became widely grown. International coffee prices during that time were quite favorable, which contributed to the popularity of this crop. According to several historians, between 1850 and 1880 Colombia’s annual coffee production increased from 1,000 bags to 100,000 bags. By 1905 the country was already producing 500,000 bags and by 1930 it had exported over 3 million bags. It is estimated that by 1920 coffee represented 65% of Colombia’s total exports by value. The expansion of coffee throughout the country had significant political, economic and social effects.

The spread of coffee throughout the country was highly influenced by the ease of transport from the main producing areas to the ports. In the beginning most of the coffee was grown in Santander, thanks to its closeness to the Venezuelan port of Maracaibo. But as railroads were built in the central part of the country, coffee growing rapidly spread to other regions in the center of the country like Cundinamarca and Antioquia.

By 1932 almost 50% of the total coffee production was grown in Caldas and Antioquia. Departments such as Nariño, Huila and Cauca (in the South of the country) represented less than 5% of the total coffee production in 1932, due mainly to the lack of adequate infrastructure. It is estimated that by 1930 Colombia already represented 10% of total world coffee exports.

The Expansion of the 20th Century

In 1927 a group of coffee growers got together in Medellin to create an organization that they named Federacion Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia (the FNC). The main objective of this federation of coffee growers was to improve their member’s income. With this objective in mind, and given the International Coffee Pact of 1940, the national government and the FNC created a stabilization fund, which is known as the Fondo Nacional del Café (National Coffee Fund). This Fund is a national account, which has been managed by the FNC since then.

The Fund’s objectives are threefold: (a.) To accumulate inventories under the country’s commitments under ICO Agreements, helping to reduce the volatility in prices; (b.) To act as a buyer of last resort for coffee growers, helping them by giving them a minimum and transparent price for their coffee; and (c.) To help finance public works in coffee growing areas, as well as investment in research and other coffee related areas.

With the help of the FNC and the support from the Government, coffee growing expanded all over the country. By the end of the 1960′s there were 1 million productive coffee hectares and production was of just over 8.5 million bags. During the 1960′s and 70′s the FNC stimulated the cultivation of the Caturra variety, replacing the Typica variety, which had been grown for over a century. Unlike Brazil and Central America, Colombian coffee growers had not grown much Bourbon trees, which were more productive than Typica but had smaller beans. Growers favored Typica trees because of their long, bold beans, much appreciated by exporters because it was easier to produce Supremos.

The Caturra variety, first discovered in Brazil in the 1950′s, is more productive than Typica, can be grown more densely in coffee plots, and can be grown fully exposed to the sun instead of under shade trees. The cultivation of Caturra thus caused a great technological change, since growing coffee under full sun obliged coffee growers to use more chemical fertilizers.

Although at the beginning coffee growers resisted to the new technology and variety, the increase in international coffee prices seen in the 1970′s and 80′s – thanks to the International Coffee Agreements – pushed growers to produce more coffee. Indeed, thanks to this technological change, by 1990 coffee production had increased to 14 million bags with just under 1 million productive coffee hectares, a 60% increase in productivity.

Production and Processing

Colombia is known today as the largest producer of washed Arabica coffee. In fact, unlike Brazil or Ethiopia, all coffee produced in Colombia is washed processed. This is due to an abundant supply of water in most coffee growing regions and to the fact that during the harvesting season the weather is predominantly wet and humid.

Harvesting

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.

Wet Milling and Fermentation (Beneficio)

After the cherries are picked from the trees, they are taken to the beneficio where the pulp (skin) of the cherry is removed mechanically (de-pulping). In Colombia most farms process their coffee cherries in their own beneficio. After the skin of the cherry is removed, the beans are placed in fermentation tanks so that the mucilage gets fermented. The fermented mucilage is then removed by washing the beans with clean water. The fermentation process usually lasts between 12 and 16 hours, depending on the weather (temperature and humidity) and the amount of coffee in the tank.

Today, some coffee growers use mechanical mucilage removers (known as BECOLSUB’s in Colombia) to mechanically remove the mucilage from the parchment instead of waiting to ferment the mucilage. These machines use only 1/40th of the amount of water traditionally used to ferment the mucilage and to wash the parchment coffee. The advantage of this new method is that it reduces contamination of water sources. The removed pulp is used by some coffee growers to produce compost for fertilizing their coffee trees.

Most quality conscious coffee growers also classify their parchment after de-pulping, either using mechanical methods (such as a zaranda) or by using water to sort it by density.

Drying

After the beans are free of mucilage, the washed parchment is taken to drying patios or beds to dry. Today most small growers use parabolic drying beds (such as the one seen in the picture on the left). These parabolic drying beds have a plastic floor with holes so that the water present in the parchment can be released rapidly. Thanks to this system parchment coffee can be dried more evenly and growers avoid having to pick up the coffee in plastic bags when it rains (which increases the chances of cup defects). 

The drying process usually takes between 7 to 14 days depending on the weather, until it reaches a humidity level between 10 – 12%. 

Larger farms use mechanical dryers (fueled by coal, gas, diesel or coffee parchment), which reduce the drying time to only 20 to 24 hours.

Storage

Once the parchment is dried to its optimum level, coffee growers pack their coffee in 40 kg bags and store it until they take it down to town to sell.

From Virmax.com

In Colombia, where coffee had been introduced by the Jesuits as early as 1723, civil strife and the inaccessibility of the best coffee-growing regions had hampered the growth of a coffee industry. Following the “Thousand Days War” of 1899 to 1903, the new peace saw Colombians turn to coffee as their salvation. While larger plantations, or haciendas, dominated the upper Magdalena river regions of Cundinamarca and Tolima, determined peasants staked new claims in the mountainous regions to the west, in Antioquia and Caldas. New railways, relying on coffee for profit, allowed more coffee to be grown and transported.

In 1905 Colombia exported five hundred thousand bags of coffee; by 1915 exports had doubled. While Brazil desperately tried to control its overproduction, Colombian coffee became increasingly popular with American and European consumers. In 1914 Brazil supplied three-quarters of U.S. imports with 5.6 million bags, but by 1919 that figure had fallen to 4.3 million, while Colombia’s share had risen from 687,000 to 915,000 bags. During the same period Central American exports to the U.S. had risen from 302,000 to 1.2 million bags.