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For colombian coffee growers, sustainability is not a trend but a lifestyle.
Learn about the Sustainability That Matters for colombian coffee growers

 

The Colombian Coffee Growers Federation (FNC) is a social organization that represents over 563.000 small coffee growers within 20 departments of Colombia. The FNC  counts with sustainability policies that impact the coffee growers, focusing mainly  in the productive, social and environmental areas .

 The FNC is a non-profit organization, funded by national and international resources. Among its various projects, it has created an institutional model which allows coffee growers to turn their collective savings into public goods of their own interest. With this sustainability model, since 1927 the FNC has managed to: ensure coffee growers purchased at transparent prices, , develop scientific research projects, transfer new technologies to coffee fields, position Café de Colombia as the richest coffee in the world, and implement social programs in alliances in which the national and local governments, certain clients, the multilateral development banks, and international cooperation agencies participate.

The FNC distributes its “Sustainability that Matters” programs in 4 pillars of action:  Farm, Communities, The Environment, and Connectivity. 

Farm:

The programs concerning the farm are designed to improve the coffee growers’ profitability, and to guarantee a sustainable coffee industry. Farm projects include access to credit for renewal and maintenance of coffee plantations, market access and added value for small coffee growers and the implementation of Sustainability and Quality systems in the farm. In the last six years, more than 100 thousand coffee growers, 20% of the Colombian producers, have participated in certification and verification procedures. 

 Communities:

The FNC’s democratic culture is legitimized by the Coffee Grower Elections held every four years. The coffee growers choose their guild representatives, the Municipal and Departmental Coffee Growers Committees, and the delegates to the National Congress of Coffee Growers, the most important FNC body. During the last coffee elections held on September 2010, 64% of the federated coffee growers participated showing their sense of belonging and attachment to their organization.

Communityprograms involve the 588 municipalities where Colombian coffee grower families live. Besides leading educational projects concerning technical and technological training and promoting gender equality and coexistence, community programs focus on the strengthening of social processes and community infrastructure within the municipalities.

Since its foundation, the FNC has acquired a significant role in the development of projects that impact hundreds of  communities in rural areas of the country.

Originally funded by FNC, and recently with Government and sponsors resources, in 8 decades these initiatives have reached over 3 million people. Some results include:

•  12 thousand aqueducts built
• 19 thousand classrooms for 188 thousand students
•  15 thousand kilometers of roads connecting 5 million Colombians
• 500 hospitals and health centers for over 3 million people.

 Additionally, Juan Valdez Cafés, with over 18.700 coffee growers as shareholders, contribute to the promotion of Colombian coffee and give visibility to social projects such as Coffee for Gramalote and “Café de la Reconciliación.” Both of these projects seek to benefit endangered communities through special editions of Juan Valdez coffee.

 Connectivity:

Globalization implies both challenges and opportunities for coffee growers. Throughout technology and connectivity programs, the FNC provides coffee growers the benefits offered by the modern world giving them access to more services, information and a better quality of life.

In 2011 the FNC will complete the installation of 68 new connectivity centers, which intend to educate coffee growers in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT).

In order to have accurate information to execute its different projects, The FNC has developed the biggest and most reliable rural database in the country (SICA), consisting in over 1.4 million geo-referenced coffee lots. This information is constantly updated, and allows the FNC to develop relevant and effective programs in a segmented way.

Additionally, the Intelligent Coffee Growers ID Card, allows coffee producers to access services in a quick and safe way. These services include receiving payments from their coffee production and governmental programs, the purchasing of groceries and mobile phone credit, and electronic voting in the elections. 

 Environment:

The conservation of the environment is a priority for the FNC and essential for the sustainability of the coffee growers’ activity. Therefore, the FNC has made significant investments in research, knowledge transfer, conservation and intelligent management of the environment .

Cenicafé, the FNC’s national coffee research center, has developed scientific programs favoring environmental conservation and biodiversity in the coffee regions, as well as adaptation to climate change.

 The program “Biodiversidad y Caficultura”(Biodiversity and Coffee Growing) reflects the interdependence of the coffee industry and the environment. With the support of the Global Environmental Facility of the World Bank (WB) and the Global Environmental Fund (GEF), among others, “Biodiversidad y Caficultura,” works for the certification and verification of 27.000 coffee hectares with friendly practices with the environment, the establishment of 450 hectares of biodiversity conservation corridors, and the training of 11.500 coffee growers on a local level.

Among other projects, during the last 20 years, programs concerning the protection of water basins and watersheds have been held. Assistance from the Ministry of Agriculture and German cooperation have led to the planting of trees in over 65,000 hectares in the basins of the Magdalena and Cauca rivers.

 The intelligent management of resources applies to models such as “Beneficio Ecológico del Café” (Becolsub), developed by Cenicafé, which managed to reduce the consumption of water per kilo of washed coffee from 40 liters  to 1 liter,  and incorporate Good Agricultural Practices (GPA) and sustainable agro-forestry systems.

 Carbon footprint measurement and the attempts of the FNC to mitigate climate change are other examples of programs focused on the environment. Throughout the entire production process, from the farm to the cup, the measurement allows the impacts and chances of mitigation of the life cycle to be analyzed. Regarding adaptation to environments with different temperatures and patterns of precipitation, research based on the coffee genome is been done towards the development of new varieties capable of growing in new conditions.

 The four pillars of Sustainability that Matters (www.SustainabilityThatMatters.org) illustrate what an organization can achieve by incorporating sustainability from the very begging of their strategy. Being sustainable while having a modern vision of resource leveraging, added value, and differentiation, has become a priority for the Colombian coffee growers.