Devouring profit - International Coffee Organization

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As can be observed, 60% of farmers are over 49 years old. This average age could be
a barrier to IPM adoption as found by Duque et al. (2000), for coffee farmers in
Colombia. On the other hand, in an appraisal of the national coffee programme carried
out by the Mexican Coffee Council (2000) it was reported that the average family
composition was about 10 members distributed among children, young people, adults
and elderly people. Additionally, Jimenez (1999) found that the level of formal education
was very low, 75.3% of the coffee farmers either had no education or had not
finished primary school. Again, for high adoption of IPM, a good level of education is
desirable because included in the strategy are concepts such as sampling, mathematical
calculations etc.
Land tenure: the salient factor in the Mexican case is that 95% of farmers own their
farms and 61.5% have been farming them for more than 10 years. Land reforms in
Mexico have guaranteed that most of the farmers have clear property rights on land
they cultivate, though using this as loan collateral is often not easy because of strict
laws about disposing of this land.
Labour needs & rural wages: agriculture and related sectors (forestry, fishing, etc.)
currently employs about 22% of the national labour. Related to wages, it was possible
to observe at least two basic kind of payments: for Ejidos 26 coffee farmers were paying
$20 Mexican pesos 27 per day’s labour (US$2.08/day), plus two meals. On larger farms
the salary was about $30 per day (US$3.12).
According to the Mexican Coffee Council (2000), family members carry out coffee
activities, covering approximately 90% of the annual farm needs. Figure 19 shows the
Figure 19. Family contribution to labour needs for Mexican coffee.
26 Ejido is a type of land tenure that appeared after land reform programmes were implemented.
A large farm was divided into small plots that were allocated among small coffee
farmers; they own their lands according to Government laws.
27 Exchange rate: US$1 = $9.6 Mexican pesos (2000)