Tens of thousands of coffee growers will attempt to bring roads across Colombia to a standstill in February to demand the government step in to save their troubled industry, said a strike organizer Wednesday.
The coffee growers strike will block national highways across 12 departments of Colombia, in an attempt to save an industry for which Colombia is famous, Victor Correa, strike coordinator in Antioquia department, told Colombia Reports Wednesday.
"We are paid $282 for a sack of coffee but the cost of producing it is $366," he said. "We are small farmers. We are poor. The culture of coffee growing is important to Colombia but we cannot continue like this...We are facing an economic crisis, a social crisis, an institutional crisis and a crisis of production."
Marina Velez, a coffee grower from Concordia in southwest Antioquia and president of her local growers association told Colombia Reports that, "International brands and middlemen in Colombia are getting money...but we are not getting enough to live on."
The strike and blockade is planned to begin on February 25. According to Correa the department of Antioquia will see 20,000 people taking action, while the Huila department will see 80,000 coffee growers taking what they see as a last-ditch action to save their livelihoods.
"We don't know how to do anything else but grow coffee. We cannot change careers. We don't have the money," said Velez. "It's even part of our identity."
"Cocoa producers and rice producers will also join us," said Correa. "This is a crisis of all agriculture in Colombia because the government has ignored agriculture."
Instead the government has focused on mining, claims Correa. There are mining concessions and applications covering much of the land where coffee is currently grown. "The mining companies get tax relief but agriculture doesn't."
The government has given a temporary subsidy to farmers of $33 dollars per sack, but this is not enough to turn coffee-growing into a money-making enterprise and is set to end on January 31
