In Nicaragua some coffee farmers obtain average crop yields of 35 quntals per acre of green coffee.
Monday, May 21, 2012
A major challenge for Nicaraguan coffee growers is to increase their productivity and achieve technological and administrative renewal.
"In the last ten years the national yield has fluctuated between 7.7 and 12.10 quintals per acre and the average during that period was 10.29 quintals per acre, one of the lowest in Latin America. In Costa Rica it is around 20 quintals per acre," reported Lucydalia Baca in Laprensa.com.ni .
The Nicaraguan Foundation for Economic and Social Development (FUNIDES) aims to promote a program with an investment of over $117 million to increase productivity to twenty quintals per acre. If achieved, domestic production, which this year was about 2.2 million quintals, would double over the next 15 years, earning up to $800 million in revenue, estimated Jose Antonio Baltodano, president of FUNIDES.
"The program Improvement of Coffee Production for small and medium producers aims to benefit about three thousand small and medium producers in six years, financing the renovation of some 15,000 acres of coffee farms and improving technology a further 12,000 acres. In the same way, it will raise skills and knowledge in technology of about 81 technicians involved in the program, explained in Julio Solorzano Lanzas, a consultant who worked on this proposal", explains the article.
It also seeks to develop a safety and grain traceability project.
It has been noted that lack of a national policy for development of the sector in the long term has prevented more than 2 million hundredweight from being produced on average every year since 2000.
Production has stagnated, with figures close to two million hundredweight for the past three years, surpassed by Guatemala and Honduras, with production levels 4 and 6 million respectively.
The six-year investment will allow the improvement and renovation of 182,000 acres of coffee grown in Nicaragua, aiming to achieve yields of 20 quintals per hectare.
The National Programme for the Transformation and Development of Coffee Plantations (PNTDC) aims to raise the industry average from 11.1 to 20 quintals per acre, an improvement which would start from the 2018-19 harvest, allowing an export production averaging 3.2 million quintals per harvest.
In the first ten months of the current crop foreign exchange revenues totaled $374.7 million, $37.2 million less than in the same period in the last harvest.
The decline in foreign exchange earnings has been caused in part by the decline in export volumes (1.71 million quintals from October to July this year versus 1.83 million quintals in the same period last year) coupled with a slight decline in the average price per quintal. The average sales price was $218.1, $ 7.5 less compared to the same period of the previous crop, $225.6.
The Nicaraguan Foundation for Economic and Social Development (FUNIDES), has presented a study entitled "Program For Improvement of Coffee Production for Small and Medium Producers."
From the press release by FUNIDES:
The Nicaraguan Foundation for Economic and Social Development (FUNIDES), presents the study "Program For Improvement of Coffee Production for Small and Medium Producers (May 2012)" prepared in July by the consultants Julio Solórzano Lanzas and Félix Cáceres Trujillo.
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