Getting to Normal

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Illycaffè Supports Coffee Cultivation in Post-conflict Colombia

CAUCA, Colombia

Land restitution is an administrative nightmare as 14,000 decommissioned rebels seek social and economic integration. Reclaiming the men just may be more immediately do-able than reclaiming the land.

By Bethany Haye

Colombia approved legislation regulating the return of land forcibly taken from those who owned or had cultivated it for generations long before the Colombian government and rebel insurgents known as FARC signed a peace agreement in November 2016.

The Land Restitution Law was a major step, considering that Colombia has the second-highest rate of internally displaced people in the world. The law aims to help almost six million people (13% of the population) to finally go home. Among them are roughly 100,000 coffee growers, forced off their land by rebel groups and drug cartels.

The main coffee regions of the country stand to gain substantially from land restitution. But, seven years on, implementing the law has proved excruciatingly slow. So slow that one official contacted by STiR coffee and tea said that applicants whose cases have been positively assessed, but who face long waits for the official stamp of approval, are being allowed to re-take possession without title.

Since the law passed, only 106,833 land restitution applications have been filed, about one-third of the number expected. Of the 50,000 cases reviewed by courts, 20,000 have been denied, 3,000 were granted title, and 27,000 are still waiting for a decision. Significantly, of the 3,000 land titles delivered, a mere 488 titles, or 16% of the total, are for coffee cultivation.

There are legitimate reasons for this. With little government presence in rural areas and a past built on unregulated homesteading, 6 in 10 farmers do not hold formal documentation for their land. Many don’t apply for that reason, or because they worry about reprisals if they do manage to get their farms back. As of August 2017, at least 72 land restitution claimants have been murdered, and thousands more have received death threats. In some cases, under threat of violence, the displaced are forced to flee their homes a second time because of their involvement in the restitution process.

Terms of the peace agreement allocate COL$8 million ($2,650) for each former combatant provided they submit a project demonstrating how they plan to use the money. Few in coffee have done so. 

The sustained decline in prices and the effects of climate change and land erosion forced many to abandon efforts to get back into producing coffee. A plethora of programs and initiatives are working – more-or-less efficiently – to fix problems affecting coffee growers during the 52-year conflict. But USAID has noted chronic overlap and non-coordination among them.

On the other side of that issue are the decommissioned fighters who need to find a constructive place in society. Many joined the conflict while quite young and have never worked. In January of this year, Jean Arnault, head of the UN Verification Mission in Colombia, told the Security Council “Colombia’s peace efforts remain challenged by the task of reintegrating 14,000 former rebel combatants.”

There are a few private initiatives underway for them as well as government and NGO programs. Last spring Italian roaster illycaffè stepped up to deploy its extensive knowledge and technical resources to train more than 600 ex-rebels in the Cauca region to be successful coffee growers. The group also includes ex-fighters and small producers from La Elvira, Los Monos, Caldono, Patria, Monte Redondo, and Miranda in the far northeastern reaches of Colombia.

Illycaffè is all in

Illycaffè had already begun expanding its purchases of Colombian coffee by double digits between 2015 and 2017, buying incursions into parts of the country that were unreachable during the violence. Now those areas have opened up, and the Italian company in May signed an agreement with Ascafè, an association of small specialty coffee growers, designating tracts of land recovered from illegal occupiers in 20 of the main coffee-growing departments of the country.

Former rebels who agree to remain in their designated ETCR (Territorial Spaces for Training and Reintegration) for training also qualify for housing under the Colombian Agency for Reintegration (ARN).

The Cauca Coffee initiative with Ascafè and the Comité de Cafeteros del Cauca “enables Illy to provide incentives to former insurgents to work in an industry that offers a concrete legal and profitable option,” said illycaffè chairman Andrea Illy.

The agreement guarantees illycaffè will purchase the coffee produced through the initiative for several years—provided the product meets illycaffè’s quality standards.

“It wouldn’t make sense to train the growers to use the best agricultural practices and insist on quality if we do not intend to establish a long-term business relationship,” he said.

Illycaffè is also participating in the drive to stabilize prices for growers. “We decided to apply a fixed price for several years to insulate these producers from the uncertain dynamics of the New York and London exchanges. This creates price security for us and for former fighters, enabling them to develop a legal livelihood that will be economically sustainable over time,” Illy explains. Illy is also mindful of social and environmental aspects.

In 95% of cases, the local population accepts the return of former fighters, because they understand that it is necessary to continue the process of reintegration. The situation is more difficult in those areas such as Cauca that are still growing coca.

“We want to tangibly contribute to the complex peace process, working alongside the people and the organizations that are joining forces to make this happen quickly,” Illy emphasized.

In Meta, Nariño, and Norte de Santander departments former fighters continue to desert the ETCR. In the Cauca region, thanks to the option of coffee production, there were no deserters. Coffee has joined former fighters and armored the peace process, according to Illy.

Based on government estimates, “the revival of coffee farming in the former conflict zones could boost Colombia’s coffee output by 40%. That would raise global supplies of mild arabica beans by about 13%,” he said.

The combination of farmers returning to their abandoned land and other smallholders switching to coffee could help boost the country’s total output to a record 20 million 60-kg bags by 2020, up from 14.2 million bags in 2016, according to government estimates.

“We are implementing in Colombia and in Cauca the same principles that we apply in other countries where we buy our green coffee,” Illy said, describing the program’s three-pronged approach: working hand-in-hand with producers either individually or in affiliation with others; sharing knowledge that enables growers to achieve higher standards of production; and paying them at a level that makes their production economically sustainable.”

The land formalization campaign along with the initiatives for reintegrating former combatants will cement property rights, re-deploy unused land to economically productive, legal agriculture, and help heal the wounds of half a century of conflict by employing and reconciling ex-FARC rebels with communities. And ultimately it will strengthen Colombia’s world-renown coffee sector, which has always been emblematic of the best of Colombia.

It’s a task far from completed, but with high-profile participants from the global coffee sector like illycaffè, chalk up one more well-paved stretch on the road to post-conflict peace and prosperity.