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Coffee dies with the eyes and patience of governments
Posted On 24 Jun 2019
“By their fruits you will know them.” The book of Matthew – in the Bible – speaks of the false prophets “who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are rapacious wolves.” False prophets also came to the coffee plantations and are recognized today for the few fruits that are harvested each harvest.
In 2015, two years after the end of a decade of the government of Rafael Correa, its vice-president Jorge Glas, promised gold and moro in one of the robusta coffee plantation management farms in the province of Guayas. That farm that had invested in research, but when wanted to bid in the processes of contracting plants, paradoxically, these were declared “deserts.”
Glas highlighted the “advantages of the model of associativity of the project and the joint work with the autonomous governments” and that “while some throw stones, this Government builds dams so that the farmer produces more. Despite the adversities, strong actions emerge and the time has come to make Ecuador a more productive country. “
And today by the fruits we recognize it. One year after that benevolent declaration, exports were 25 thousand tons and 148 million dollars and in 2018 only 14,000 tons and $ 82 million. For that time, enormous resources were spent in the Coffee and Cacao Program, which included enormous and luxurious explanatory books on plantings and harvests.
In 2019 things are not going well. Between January and April, the volume of coffee exports in grain and industrialized fell by half compared to 2017. And in dollars something similar happened.
The manager of the National Association of Coffee Exporters (Anecafé), Pablo Pinoargote and the manager of the largest industrial plant in the country (El Café), Bernardo Arosemena, have highlighted that the announced investment has not been seen in the field, and that every year the point becomes more critical.
“The until recently flourishing coffee industry, which since 2000 had a steady rise reaching record export sales of 200 million dollars, has been facing a severe crisis,” stresses Askley Delgado Flor, president of the Askelgado S.A.
Ecuador was ranked in 2012 as the second exporter of soluble coffee in the world, surpassed only by Brazil. The cracking of the activities in the industrial plants meant that 1,800 work places that were generated directly, are reduced to 800.
It is estimated that this year there will be a notable decrease in soluble coffee exports, so it may well be said that this industrial activity is in deep agony.
Soluble coffee producing industries in the world, says Delgado, are supported by their governments, so that they become competitive, “because they understand that besides being great generators of formal and qualified direct employment, they are also an enormous multiplying factor, due to the large quantities of supplies that they require daily. “
THE DETAIL
The sector. Ecuador became the second producer of soluble coffee in the world, after Peru; the industries also made coffee from Vietnam.
THE PHRASE
In the area of Guayas, bordering Los Rios, there is no coffee to sell to merchants.
Patricio Alcívar, farmer
