Caribbean & Central America - May 2019

On 3 February, the Inter-American Institute for Agricultural Cooperation (IICA) announced its new Central American Programme for the Management of Coffee Leaf Rust (Procagica) in an attempt to solve the numerous problems facing the coffee sector in Central America. The agreement was made with the input of federation representatives, producers, associations and government institutions; and advised by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). It involves the countries of the Central American Integration System (Sica): Belize, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic (DR), El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama.

Coffee leaf rust (CLR), a destructive fungal infection that affects coffee plantations, has long been the scourge of Central America’s coffee industry – one of the region’s economic pillars. The objective of the Procagica initiative is to address the challenges facing the coffee sector, such as low international market prices, climate change, aging plants, lack of access to investment, lack of labour resources, and the recent intensification of disease outbreaks. In a press release, the Costa Rica-based IICA said “[Sica countries] have joined forces to formulate a strategic plan that will give solutions to problems faced by the coffee sector.”

Perhaps most importantly, the Regional Coffee Leaf Rust Early Warning System (Sirat) will be implemented across the region and beyond, with the ten countries of the Cooperative Regional Programme for the Technological Development and Modernisation of Coffee Production (Promecafe) set to benefit: Costa Rica, the DR, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, and Peru. René León-Gómez, the executive secretary of the IICA/Promecafe project, said that, “each of the beneficiary countries has been making progress within their means, and Sirat took this progress as a starting point to develop our project further”.

Procagica will also offer a support network with 40 multidisciplinary specialists from a variety of institutions on hand to determine when an outbreak might be forthcoming. Through the system, producers will have direct access to tailored advice that can prevent falls in production, and León-Gómez confirmed that the experts will include technical specialists from the coffee sector as well as epidemiologists, meteorologists and sociologists. Procagica will also allow for the exchange of data and technical information to enable growers to make better decisions; and will seek to be a more reliable, efficient and personalised system which will consider the microclimate of the plantation and means of the individual grower and will receive financing from the Regional Fund for Agricultural Technologies (Fontagro). In the region administered by Promecafe, 34m 60 kg sacks of coffee beans are produced annually – about 25% of the arabica variety produced worldwide – and some 5m people in the region rely on the coffee trade, according to the institution’s own data.

The initiative will also be part-funded by the European Union. On 22 February, the secretary general of Sica, Vinicio Cerezo, met the head of the European Commission’s Rural Development, Food Security and Nutrition Unit, Leonard Mizzi, to discuss the importance of the coffee sector to Sica economies. Cerezo said his organisation was hoping that agreement would “go to the root of the problem to address structural issues such as migration, climate change and food security”. Mizzi underlined the commission’s interest in supporting the region’s small-scale producers and increase the involvement of international organisations in tackling the endemic problems in Central America’s coffee sector.

There has also been interest in protecting Central America’s coffee plantations from the international private sector. On 26 February, a trade mission comprised of eight delegates from the Taiwanese coffee industry, including roasters, importers and coffee shop owners, visited the region. The Taiwanese ambassador to Guatemala, John Lai, confirmed that talks were ongoing with the Central American Economic Integration Bank (BCIE) to approve a Q308.4m (US$40m) loan to invest in projects to combat coffee rust and other diseases. He said there would be a Q26.9m (US$3.5m) contribution from the Taiwanese government.

In Guatemala, the National Coffee Association (Anacafé) reported that since 2016, demand had grown 40% in Taiwan, 50m 60-kilogram sacks sold there in 2018 at a value of US$10.6m. The director of Taiwan’s Central American Trade Office (Cato), Jaime Chuang, explained that the younger generation in Taiwan prefer coffee to tea accounting for the rise in demand. According to Anacafé, there are 125,000 producers in Guatemala – 97% of whom are small traders – who exported 3.4m sacks of coffee in 2018. Anacafé data show that 193,200 hectares are affected by CLR, equivalent to 70% of the area of coffee plantations.

In Honduras, the country representative of the IICA, Franklin Marín, said that Progagica’s support in the region would lead to long- and short-term solutions being found. Asterio Reyes, the president of the Honduran Coffee Institute (Ihcafé), also highlighted the importance of dedicating efforts to building alternatives for the sector and urged Honduras to continue to work with other countries in the region. Furthering the link with private businesses, producers in 11 of Honduras’ administrative departments have been given solar drying equipment and other technical assistance as part of a transnational accord struck between confectionary conglomerate Nestlé and Honduran exporter, Cohonducafé relating back to a deal struck in 2014. Nestlé is the world’s single largest buyer of coffee, buying 850,000 tonnes of unroasted coffee – more than 18 million sacks – each year; about 2% of which comes from Central America

The president of CoHonducafé, Terence Fuschich, said that the agreement included the strengthening of growers’ technical capacities and would provide economic and educational development opportunities. The manager of the Honduran Coffee Institute (Ihcafé), Adilson Ávila, said that the market rate of between US$100 and US$105 does not even cover production costs for producers in Honduras. He said that in response to a CLR outbreak in 2012-2013, Ihcafé sent its 220 specialists around the country to teach growers how to combat the disease, but that the problem is no longer a lack of knowledge – rather a lack of resources.

As multilateral efforts continue to target CLR in an effort to eradicate it in Central America, the implementation of expert-led early warning and technical assistance systems is a boost to the fight to control the disease. With no shortage of interested parties and funding opportunities, it could be that a corner has been turned in coordinating the fight against CLR with the announcement of the Procagica initiative.

Coffee leaf rust (CLR)

Coffee leaf rust (CLR) is a disease caused by the Hemileia Vastatrix fungus which decimates coffee plantations. It particularly affects the superior arabica variety of the plant which is ubiquitous in Central America, and its destructive impact is amplified by the fact that the plant only bears fruit once a year. There is currently no cure for CLR, although some plantations have managed to reduce its impact by replanting infected crops with hybrid plants with stronger genetic resistance to the fungus. In 2012, a major increase in CLR incidence hit 10 Latin American and Caribbean countries causing coffee prices to rise, and an emergency summit in Guatemala in April 2013 determined that the epidemic was so devastating due to a lack of resources, the dismissal of early warning signs, ineffective fungicide application, lack of training, poor infrastructure, and conflicting advice. In some parts of Central America, growers have resorted to replacing arabica plants with the less-susceptible – yet inferior – robusta variety.