Coffee growers in Huila are committed to improving their crops.

The departments with the highest suitability for coffee cultivation are Antioquia, Cauca, Huila, Tolima, and Santander. ​
 

Colombia has over 6.2 million hectares suitable for coffee cultivation, which is 5.4% of the national area.
 

 

Bogotá D.C., (@UPRAColombia, @claudialili76). According to municipal agricultural evaluations (Evas, 2023), coffee is the most widely planted crop in Colombia. A total of 853,361 hectares were identified, mostly cultivated by small family producers, with nearly 96% owning less than five hectares. These coffee plantations are spread across about 603 municipalities in 22 departments of the country.

 

The Rural Agricultural Planning Unit (UPRA) is conducting workshops with coffee growers in their regions to gather production cost, productivity, and price data for financial evaluation of coffee cultivation in the six leading production departments nationwide: Huila, Antioquia, Santander, Cauca, Caldas, and Tolima.

  

"On April 9th, with the support of the Government of Huila and the Municipality of Pitalito, we started this exercise with the producers, where we identified information on the coffee cultivation process from land preparation for planting to grain marketing. This information is crucial to radiate to the 35 coffee-producing municipalities of the Huila department and obtain important financial indicators such as the internal rate of return (IRR), cost-benefit ratio, net present value (NPV), investment recovery period (IRP), and minimum profitable area (MPA)", explained Johanna Cruz Tovar, technical expert from UPRA.

 

The exercise involved small producers from the municipality of Pitalito with representatives from the Association of Coffee Producer Groups (Agacafe) and the Departmental Cooperative of Coffee Growers of Huila (Cadefihuila), as well as representatives from companies such as Boscaffe, Gloriellas, Kawa, and entities such as the National Federation of Coffee Growers, SENA, and the Chamber of Commerce, Pitalito branch, among others.

 

These technical exercises will continue to be developed in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, UPRA, local governments, national and regional entities, with coffee growers of Colombia taking the lead, aiming to improve sector information for all coffee-growing families. 

  

"We invite coffee growers from Caldas to the upcoming workshop on Coffee Production Cost Assessment, which will take place on April 30th, 2024, from 7:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., at the main auditorium of the Coffee Committee in Anserma-Caldas, to actively participate in this collective construction exercise, from and for the territories," concluded UPRA Director Claudia Liliana Cortés López.​