Juan Valdez in Armenia

January 29, 2018  Juan Valdez in Armenia

The Andes make a triple range, running north-south, in central Colombia, and we’ve been on the eastern range in Bogota.  This morning we arose at 3:45 AM to make a 6:30 AM flight from Bogota to Armenia which is on the western of the three ranges.  The flight was 25 minutes but saved a full day of driving up and down over narrow two-lane roads.

Why is this city named Armenia in a Spanish-speaking country?  The name was changed to Armenia in honor of those killed in the genocide by the Turks of the early 1920s.  Armenia is the regional capital and the center of coffee production in this part of Colombia.  Today we learned more about coffee growing, harvesting, drying, roasting, and selling than….  Well, you know.  I do have a far greater understanding of the need for fair-trade coffee after being here.

We visited a coffee plantation, where the story of the lives of the plantation workers was explained to us in detail.  It is still almost a feudal system, although there have been some laws passed in recent years protecting the workers’ incomes and providing for their old age.  Almost all the workers are men, many are single, those with families cannot bring their families with them.  They function as migrant workers, but unlike crops which come to ripeness all at once, coffee can be picked continually, with some waves of more fruits ripening.  The workers pick from sunup to sundown, and live for free in the plantation dormitory:

  

Their meals are sold to them, but they have no choice about where and what to eat.  There are no other options.  The cost of meals is subtracted from their wages, and the woman who collects the money, buys provisions and cooks the meals is, herself, an independent contractor, not an employee of the plantation:

The work is not easy.  The coffee beans go through a progression as they get ripe (red, called cherries) and overripe:

  

The field boss watches carefully to see that only ripe cherries are picked, and will discard those which are not acceptable.  Payment is by the kilo.  We tried it; it’s very difficult.  Here’s our field worker:

And the fruits of our two-person 15-minute harvest.  We’d starve on what we’d earn:

 This 83-year old man still works the plantation:

He has no savings, no pension, when he can no longer work he will go to some sort of supported living arrangement sponsored by the government, which is a recent undertaking.  Prior to that there were no supports for old men like him.

Our day continued with a lovely lunch, outdoors o the plantation, where we had sancoche, a soup made with a heavy stock and root vegetable, and alongside (or in the soup if you prefer) some beef, chicken, or pork.  It was very good.

We visited the drying platforms for ordinary coffee, the driers for more expensive coffee, then drove to the town of Salento where we visited the roaster:

So, the final word from our very opinionated coffee guide:  first, using sugar and/or milk in coffee is an abomination.  Coffee has natural sugars, and good coffee needs no extra.  More opinion: Proper roasting is only to medium brown.  Dark roasting ruins the natural sugars in the bean—the dark color comes from caramelization of the sugars in the bean.  He had mixed feelings about Starbucks; on the one hand, they have increased the drinking of coffee among young people but on the other, they ruin the coffee they sell.  And on and on.

We also learned about the cooperatives, and the very expensive ad agency who created the Juan Valdez campaign 40 or 50 years ago.  It’s been very effective, and Colombian premium coffee has done well ever since.

We’re at the hotel in Salento and will sleep well tonight.  I’ll never look at coffee the same way again.