Devouring profit - International Coffee Organization

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Ecuadorian coffee growers
Main characteristics: coffee farmers number about 150,000 in Ecuador. According to
a survey carried out in this project, 95% of those questioned were men and only 5%
women owner-occupiers. The majority (56%) were more than 50 years old, whilst just
7% were less than 30 years old. 88% of them had only primary education, 9% secondary
and only 2% tertiary education. These figures suggest that functional illiteracy may
well be high amongst Ecuadorian farmers, which is a disadvantage since it is well
known that increasing educational levels correlate well with improvement in farm
management. This is especially the case for an IPM strategy where measurements
have to be taken and recorded, and a decision made after careful analysis.
On a more positive note, farmers’ experience of coffee must be considerable, since
68% of them have been growing coffee for more than 10 years, with just 13% having
less than 5 years experience. And regarding family size, 60% have more than 5 members,
which should mean that availability of family labour is good. Some farmers mentioned
that in recent months (in 2000) there had been a significant migration of rural
labour, especially to Spain. They suspect that if this trend continues, they will face a
lack of this resource in future. Despite family size, the level of contracted labour is
high, with 41% of farms employing labour, 33% using both contracted and family
labour with just 25% having sufficient family labour to carry out all coffee-related
activities.
During our meetings, cattle, cocoa and banana/plantain frequently appeared as more
important to farmers. The extremely low prices that many of them get for their poorly
processed coffee probably contributes to this position. It was clear that in most cases
their income is diversified and this kind of scheme plays a very important role in their
livelihood. More research is needed to understand how they view coffee and how
they rank it in importance as part of their livelihoods; we suspect many of them see it
as a cash earner which provides the occasional bonus payment when prices rise.
Rural wages: the daily wage for a farm worker ranged between US $1 and $2 in the
period 2000-01. The lower amount is paid for carrying out activities such as weed
control, applying fertiliser etc., while the latter is common during the harvest season.
This labour cost is cheap compared to other countries, especially Colombia. If this
state of affairs continues, Ecuador would have a competitive advantage in traditional
shade and organic coffees but would need to improve quality considerably to benefit
from this trade sector.
Honduran coffee growers
Main characteristics: according to La Central (2001) there are 109,000 coffee farmers
in Honduras. From the project survey, farmers’ average age is 43 years old. 42% are
21 to 40 years old, 38% between 40 and 50 and 20% are over 50 years old. But this
means that 80% are relatively young (50 years old or less) so this could be seen as an