Devouring profit - International Coffee Organization

4.4 Cost structure for
CBB management
In case studies carried out in Colombia (Duque et al., 2002), the cost of CBB management
varied between 5.5% and 11.0% of the total production cost. Here it is important
to clarify that a higher or lower percentage is related not only to the intensity of
the pest management but also with the proportion of coffee in production or under
new plantings. When there are extensive areas with young trees, CBB control costs
less. On the other hand if coffee is not being renovated (the case with most smallholders),
the effect of CBB and its costs of control become greater. A theoretical model of
CBB cost management developed in Cenicafé (Duque, 2001), shows clearly that
when the coffee plots are younger the management cost is lower than for older plots.
In these latter plots the average cost was about 8.7% whilst the estimated national
average is about 7%. 8.7% is an appreciable extra cost burden and shows why CBB
management has become a key component of coffee production in Colombia. Of this
CBB management cost, labour costs comprise 89% because of the high dependence
on laborious cultural control.
This high dependence on labour is a severe problem and has many ramifications:
It has long been recognised that smallholders can produce better quality coffee
than large farmers because they know their plots well, carry out timely controls
and can pick the berries at the optimum moment to achieve peak quality.
It is customarily believed that smallholder farmers have abundant family labour to
accomplish these tasks.But results from this (Appendix A) and a previous study
(Baker, 1999) suggest that this is not necessarily so; families are now not always
so large and in some places farmers see more future for their family in keeping
their children in school.
Smallholder farmers may work on neighbouring large farms because of their need
for ready cash.
Larger farmers may tend to reduce labour costs by resorting to insecticides,
sprayed by these same smallholders.
Smallholders may therefore neglect their own farm, leading to higher pest levels
and lower quality. In this case, migration of CBB from their untended plots spreads
the problem.
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