Devouring profit - International Coffee Organization

The average farmer had 23 years farming experience (modal value 30), 87.5% of them
were more than 35 years old, with an average age of 46 (range 17 to 81). 72.8% of
them did not complete primary school education - in Colombia is has been estimated
that coffee farmers average only 3.6 years of formal education. This level of education
is not adequate for adopting a technology such as IPM whose essence is as much
conceptual as practical. Metcalf (1974) for instance, comments that the rate of acceptance
of an innovation depends on the educational status of the farmers.
The average size of a family was 5, with few having more than 6 members. From this
we conclude that family labour is no longer abundant as many had supposed and this
must impact on their ability to adopt labour intensive control methods.
Income generation: most coffee farmers surveyed (76%) did not have additional offfarm
activities to generate extra income generation and/or risk through income diversification.
Land tenure: most were owner-occupiers with clear property rights to their land. In
this case land plays a key role as collateral, facilitating access to rural credit.
Rural wages: Colombian rural wages vary depending on the region and time of year.
In S. Colombia where labour is normally abundant, rural wages tend to be lower than
in the central coffee regions where the most intensively farmed coffee in Colombia is
situated.
In the case of short-term workers a normal wage in the central zone is about $13,000
to $14,000 Colombian pesos per day (US$5.9 to 6.4, 2002). This wage is normally
paid for unspecialised activities such as weeding, shade regulation, pruning, fertilisation,
etc., including some coffee collections when carrying out cultural control for CBB
management. For other activities such as main harvest periods, wages tend to rise
because payment is by weight of berries collected. Under this scheme good workers
could increase significantly their income, up to US$10 per day.
Other types of labour involving specialised activities such as spraying, post-harvest
processing and so on is normally done by permanent workers where the wages are
higher because some social security payments are included.
Thus from our surveys, it seems that Colombia pays some of the world’s highest
wages for coffee. This explains why coffee growers there are always particularly sensitive
to agricultural recommendations that involve extra labour as in the case of CBB
control.
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