For more than two weeks, coffee growers in Colombia have participated in a nationwide strike that has roiled the country.
Mass mobilizations and blockades of major highways have caused economic losses and shortages of food and fuel in 25 of its 32 departments. Riots in the capital Bogota left four protesters dead, dozens of police injured and hundreds arrested. The government called out the Army to restore order.
When Colombia’s coffee farmers staged a strike earlier this year, the specialty coffee community followed the action closely. This time around, it seems to have barely noticed.
That may be because the images dominating the coverage are not of coffee growers blocking mountain passes high in the Andes, but of young people clashing with riot police on city streets. But the current strike is a direct extension of the previous one. Representatives of the coffee sector are pressing issues that are vital for the viability of coffee farming over the short-term, including extension of subsidies, price controls for agrochemicals and restructuring of farmer debt. The longer-term implications of the strikes are no less important to the future of Colombian coffee, but decidedly messier — they are entwined in the politics of institutional reform within Colombia’s coffee sector.
From the Paro Cafetero to the Paro Nacional
Back in February, the Movement for the Dignity of Colombian Coffee Growers staged a nationwide coffee strike. Dignidad Cafetera is a social movement that claims to represent Colombia’s coffee growers. It is a fierce critic of the country’s official coffee institutions. In March, the paro cafetero it organized won important concessions from the government, including more than $400 million in subsidies for farmers reeling from a combination of low prices and unfavorable exchange rates.
Less than three months later, Dignidad Cafetera charged that the government was not making good on its commitments. In early June, it published a manifesto laying out its grievances and convening a second strike for 19 August. This time, it broadened the invitation to resistance, inviting other sectors of Colombia’s agricultural economy to join a paro agrario. Critics of the country’s agriculture policy argue that Colombia’s government has created a crisis in the countryside by signing free trade agreements that expose Colombian farmers to global competition without making the investments and policy adjustments necessary for them to compete effectively.
The call to arms echoed broadly, and the protest was joined not just by potato farmers and wheat farmers and dairy farmers, but also by miners and labor unions and indigenous movements and students and other groups, each of which generated its own demands. The result is the paro nacional, a collection of narrower strikes, including the paro cafetero, the paro agrario, the paro minero and others. In cities all over the country, and in a number of foreign countries, thousands have taken to the streets to express their solidarity, banging pots and pans and urging Colombia’s government to address the demands issued by the strike. While the coffee strike may be obscured in the broader current of revolt in Colombia, coffee growers continue to be at the center of the protest and continue to press issues critical to the profitability of the country’s coffee growers.
The issues.
Subsidies – When the government agreed to commit more than $400 million in subsidies for coffee farmers, its Finance Minister said the initiative was without precedent “in the history of coffee.” He also made clear that the extraordinary measure designed to avoid widespread suffering in Colombia’s coffeelands was temporary: the funds pledged by the government would run only through the end of 2013.
Now the organizers of the coffee strike claim that many coffee growers have not been able to access the subsidies, while others have been only partially compensated. Rumors of fraud are widespread. Dignidad Cafetera is calling for improvements in the administration of the funds and an extension of the subsidies into 2014.
Agricultural inputs – Colombia imposes steep taxes on agrochemical imports, driving up prices for fertilizers, fungicides and pesticides by as much as 50 percent. As part of the agreement to end the first strike in March, a committee was set up to continue to further explore the issue. Late last week, the government announced the temporary elimination of tariffs on 23 agrochemical products.
