STiR coffee and tea magazine

30 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 3, 2018 (June / July) By Bethany Haye BOGOTA, Columbia Sustainability is a goal that many industries, countries, institutions, and governments have been working toward with increasing intensity for the past two decades. But what does it really mean? The dictionary definition is the ability "to be maintained or continued over time." So sustainable agriculture means farming that doesn't wear out the land and the eco- system making them unfarmable; that doesn't deplete the soil by draining its mineral resources, poisoning it with chemicals, or deforesting large swathes for monocultures. Within the coffee community, and particularly in Colombia where the FNC (Na- tional Federation of Coffee Growers) is the vital link between the country's 560,000 smallholders, global markets, and the Colombian government, sustainability has be- come a much wider project. FNC was established to defend and improve the well- being of Colombia's coffee growers. Sustainable agriculture is fundamental to that mis- sion. FNC's definition of sustainability is all-encompassing: "A sustainability standard is a set of principles, criteria, and indicators that assure social responsibility, natural resource care, and economic viability through certification or verification of a process or product." Because sustainable coffee also, perhaps most importantly, means quality of life for the growers that can be maintained and continued over time. How did coffee get unsustainable in the first place? From the 1990s until 2004, when coffee prices dropped dramatically after the collapse of the International Coffee Agreement (among other things), the reaction of many Colombian farmers was to try to get as much yield as possible out of their acreage. Coffee grown in the sun can produce up to 150% more kilos per hectare, so clearing the forest to allow sunlight to penetrate became the method of choice. But, when the canopy goes, the other vegetation and birds go as well, allowing harmful insects to propagate, creating the need for pesticides. And, monocultures can destroy the diver- sity of nutrients in the soil within a very short span—as little as five years. Exposed to Colombia Committed to Sustainability Luis Alirio Rios owns finca El Descanso, a model farm near Manizales, Colombia Roberto Velez, FNC's c.e.o. accepts the Specialty Coffee Association's 2018 Sustainability Award for Manos al Agua, a water conservation program. The Rainforest Alliance also singled out FNC for its Sustainable Standard-Set- ters Award and FNC received the Coffee Quality Institute's Leadership Medal of Merit for its support of farmers.

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