“Gathering coffee is for crazy people”

After battling off disease and inclement weather, a number of international news agencies are reporting that the coffee farmers of Colombia are facing a new problem that is potentially their most serious to date: a lack of workers to help pick their bumper harvests.

According to some reports, some towns and regions have resorted to unusual forms of advertising to draw in seasonal staff. But it seems that people aren’t that interested.

“Gathering coffee is for crazy people,” Alejandro Hernandez is quoted as saying, adding that it’s a “very hard job.”

The talk is that the rapidly expanding construction industry is absorbing jobs: Colombia has committed to a remarkable $12 billion highway building initiative that will modernise large swathes of its transport network and it needs a workforce. Combined with urban relocation, this has left the coffee industry short of hands.

 “There is talk of reaching 15, 18 million bags but the question is who will pick it?” Caldas’ head of the National Coffee Growers’ Federation, Marcelo Salazar, mused.

Many within the industry also believe that the shortage of field workers could heighten the threat from coffee berry borers and others pests. If the crop-threatening insects are left unchecked then they could decimate entire estates and plantations, potentially plunging Colombia into another agricultural crisis.

It is believed that there are about 600,000 people working on coffee farms at the moment, but the federation estimates that they need as many as a further 240,000 people to help ensure that all coffee cherries are picked on time.