Devouring profit - International Coffee Organization

2.2 Ecuador
An RRA was carried out in Las Flores (Manabi). The goal was to understand farmers’
opinions about the main problems in coffee production. They listed the problems and
ranked them (Table 4).
Table 4. Main problems in coffee production, Las Flores.
Problem Score
Lack of community organisation
5
Low productivity 3
Commercialisation problems
3
Coffee berry borer 2
Pelicularia koleroga – a coffee disease 2
Coffee rust disease – H. vastatrix 0
Thus when farmers were asked in an informal but systematic manner about the gravity
of the problems facing coffee production, ‘lack of community organisation’ was thought
to be the main problem followed by low productivity and problems in the commercialisation
process. Despite all the farmers being aware of the CBB problem this is not
their main worry. For instance a group of farmers from Piñas, mentioned that they had
had this pest for more than 8 years and during this period its advance was slow without
serious attacks. Having categorised the problems listed above, we focused on low
productivity as a topic and invited farmers to suggest possible solutions. Table 5 describes
the potential solutions for these problems.
Table 5. Potential solutions for coffee productivity.
Problem Score
Fertilisation 4
Prune coffee trees 2
5
Improve harvest efficiency 2
New coffee varieties 1
Change shade trees 1
It seems clear that fertilisation is seen as the first step to improve coffee productivity,
but credit access difficulties were raised as a difficult hurdle to overcome. Nevertheless,
the key point here is the generalised perception of low coffee productivity by
most coffee farmers and that it was considered more important than CBB. Productivity
is a relevant variable to take into account when dealing with CBB since experiences
in other countries facing this pest have shown that coffee productivity and CBB are
two sides of the same coin. Thus low productivity will not provide sufficient economic
conditions to stimulate CBB control among the coffee growers. From this we conclude
that if coffee production in Ecuador remains generally unintensive, high IPM adoption
levels for this pest will always be difficult. We suggest that actions aimed at improving
coffee profitability are vital in order to help change the coffee farmers’ attitudes towards
IPM.
5 This means to collect more selectively red berries
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