The coffee sector plant its hopes in a new reactivation plan and in resources promised by Guillermo Lasso al Agro

Coffee producers hope there will be $ 1 billion for 1% interest loans for agriculture in general.

The national coffee sector has been free of production and exports, with a reduction of more than 75% and $ 200 million less in currencies.

This, in a nutshell, is the radiography of the sector, according to the analysis of Pablo Pinargote, manager of the National Association of Coffee Exporters (Anecafé), who regrets that the production currently does not reach more than 60,000 hectares.

This is equivalent to 300,000 60 kilos coffee bags, that is, 7 quintals per hectare. resulting from one of the lowest yields in the entire region.

Faced with this encouraging Panorama, Pinargote ensures that a reactivation of the sector is necessary, so he says that from Anecafé the National Reactivation Plan is promoted, through a project that presented the current government and also the entree.

This plan was presented last March 12 by the Minister of Production, Foreign Trade, Investments and Fisheries, Iván Ontaneda, who also announced the creation of a crisis table for the sector.

On the plan, Pinargote explains that it is based on producing 50,000 new hectares equivalent to 3 million coffee quintals, of which 50% would be Arabic variety and 50% of the robust variety.

Meanwhile, in the coffee sector there are different visions about reactivation and the method to carry it out.

Pararaluis Delgado, owner of LDC Investments, which is in the market with the La Sultana Café, believes that the announced plan is the beginning of access to credit for the renewal of coffee plantations and the reactivation of the sector that it considers important, since it ensures that the industry is below 60% of its production capacity due to the lack of raw material, since the one that matters becomes expensive and does not allow it to compete with other industries.

"Ecuadorian coffee, due to its geographical location, has very special organoleptic qualities that the consumer likes abroad, but we must also train the entire sector to apply new production techniques, seeds and even more to encourage internal coffee consumption to generate the sustainability of the producer," says Delgado.

Meanwhile, Vicente Cárdenas, national coordinator of the coffee sector, is not so enthusiastic about the nascent initiative.

He also analyzes the situation. Indicates that Peru, which almost did not have coffee production, now produces more than 6 million bags, Colombia 15 million, Central America 9 million and Brazil 60 million bags. "We cannot compete with those amounts, but in quality we have shown that we produce excellent coffee, at the 2020 auction our coffee came out with a price of $ 70.25 La Libra, we are located as one of the best coffees in the world," says the producer, who remembers that Ecuador at some point came to produce 2 million bags and was an important item along with oil.

However, he also recalls that the coffee crisis began in 2011 with the rust, a plague that affected coffee plantations, plus the repeal of the law of the sector that deprived them, according to him, training and credits with an interest rate 50% less than that of the market, three years of grace and payment deadlines of up to seven years.

He adds that after the elimination of the law, a program promoted by Rafael Correa's government was created to reactivate 120,000 hectares and produce 2 million bags, until 2021, but did not crystallize, says Cárdenas, who attributes to this program the debacle of the sector.

He ensures that the Government imported about 120 tons of coffee in Brazil and delivered them directly to coffee growers, without any previous selection or analysis of INIAP. "He came to infect more and sharpened the problem of rust, and we lower the quality of coffee," he says.

He adds that, in the current government a coffee loan was launched, but at 11.5% interest, an impossible condition to produce coffee, as it is newly produced in the fourth year.

As for the plan presented in March, he sees it unfeasible due to the short time that the current government has left, and indicates that the producing sector prepares proposals for the incoming regime of Guillermo Lasso, who hopes that he complies with the provisions of his plan: assign the agricultural resources for $ 1 billion to 1% interest and with three years of grace.

"These resources are in Guillermo Lasso's plan, in the proposal he made to the entire agricultural sector of the country," he said.

Meanwhile, Pinargote emphasizes that the innovative of the plan presented, for the country and the region, is that it will seek to connect the producer with the final buyer in the supply chain, achieving a true sustainability of the production that will allow the coffee growing to become a rural businessman.

"The project called Total Farm, from the seed to the final consumer, will allow a total traceability of our product," Anecafé manager enters.