- July 7, 2021
- Posted by: medium
- Category: National
With innovations, the thirteenth edition of the Special Coffee Contest Golden Cafes, which will be held between September and November.
In 2020, the owners of the La Florida hacienda, located in the Sozoranga canton in the province of Loja, sold special yellow catucal coffee produced in carbonic maceration to the company Momos Coffee of South Korea at a price of $ 70.25 per pound, one of the highest that has received an Ecuadorian producer by the grain. Until a few years ago companies sold special coffees at prices that did not exceed $ 35 per pound.
This coffee, winner last year of the fourteenth edition of the golden cup contest, has the anaerobic fermentation washing process; It is produced at about 1,600 meters above sea level and also became the first Ecuadorian coffee that was marketed under the English electronic auction system, in which several buyers of the world participated.
Vinicio Dávila, who until July 2 was the director of the event, indicated that at the current moments Ecuador has more experience in the production of special coffees in relation to Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Nicaragua and other nations of Central and South America.
He bases his statement on the prices that were paid for a pound of special grain production: Ecuador sold a pound of special coffee to $ 70.25, Costa Rica at $ 70.10 and Colombia in $ 70, according to statistics shown by the National Association of Coffee Growers of Ecuador (Ancafé).
"We are new on the map of coffee specialties in the world, because they generally buy coffee from Colombia or Brazil. Ecuador is breaking those paradigms and is wearing their own quality and for their own effort," said Dávila, who passed the post of the contest to Vinicio Martínez, Lojano producer and president of the Regional Federation of Ecological Coffee Growers (FAPECAFES).
Joseph Massoud, president of Anecafé, said that the guild points to conglomerating the entire coffee growing sector and that their processes mark the difference of the other producers in the world. He said that one of the strategies for this is to strengthen the golden cup contest, to continue showing the best productions of selected coffees to buyers, as well as the places, the microclimate, the soil and the entire coffee process to those interested in acquiring the grain, and the inclusion model called total estate.
"With the concept of total farm we seek to integrate the rural coffee businessman into the supply chain that is now redefined by the microclimate, have united benefits ... We want to create a new sales chain, to encourage the commercialization of coffee through digital purchase platforms," said Massoud.
The fifteenth edition of the Special Cafés Golden Contest will be held between September and November of this year; space will be given to small and medium producers, producer associations, and organizations of Ecuador in order to determine which is the best Arab Coffee harvest in Ecuador in 2021 and also start selling through digital platforms and not only with prices established through New York or London securities bags.
At present, the country's coffee production has two problems, which generates less foreign exchange income due to the export of this grain.
The first, according to Pablo Pinargote, manager of the ANCAFÉ, is that Ecuador has a serious production deficit, as it annually generates about 300,000 sacks of coffee, with an industry that each year requires having about three million quintals of this product, so they have to matter to be able to complete the demand that these companies have both inside and outside the country.
The coffee leader alleges that in the first five months of this year there is a slight improvement in production in relation to the same period of 2020, since in 2021 there were 7,000 bags of 60 kilos of Arabic coffee, 3,000 more bags in relation to 2020.
"The second approach is that the Ecuadorian industry has lost a lot of competitiveness due to its high costs of transformation, electricity, water and fuel," said Pinargote.
But there are expectations that for this 2021 coffee exports improve in relation to the last three years that have descended, and in part it is for the interest of the producers to improve the special coffee and give a better utility in each hectare of sown coffee.
While in 2018 $ 81 million were exported per sale of coffee, in 2019 there were $ 77.7 million and last year it reached $ 68.5 million, the lowest export figure of this product of the last 15 years, according to the statistics of the Anecafé.
"We hope this year we can reach $ 80 million in exports versus $ 68 million last year," said Pinargote.