Organic coffee: a Venezuelan perk.

• Author: Luxner, Larry
• Position: Activities of Foundation for the Development of Ecological Recycling and Alternative Energy

On a breezy hilltop overlooking Venezuela's crowded capital city, agronomist Franco Manrique is doing his part to save a once-proud industry. He's growing the country's first organically certified coffee.

Manrique is coordinator of the Foundation for the Development of Ecological Recycling and Alternative Energy. Known by its Spanish acronym Fundagrea, this nonprofit organization is located in the Topo las Pinas environmental center, just outside the Caracas suburb of Vista Alegre.

"Our work is mainly concerned with sustainable development, and our main objective is organic agriculture," he says. "Venezuela's population is concentrated mostly in the north, which also has the fewest sources of drinking water. And the few sources that do exist have been dramatically affected by conventional agriculture. So our strategy is to preserve and recover hydrographical basins through organic agriculture."

"Another motivation," he adds, "is the need to lower the costs of production to small producers. We're talking about an average two or three hectares [five to seven acres) per family. When we see the cost of fertilizers going up due to price liberalization, the ones who are most affected are small producers. So organic is an option for them, especially in order to offer products of high biological quality to consumers who demand it."

"We don't use a single chemical fertilizer or pesticide to preserve the quality of the product in terms of aroma and flavor," emphasizes Manrique, noting that Venezuelan coffee has a distinct taste.

"When the oil boom began in the 1920s and 1930s, Venezuela sadly abandoned its traditional coffee market," he explains, "Agriculture started to fall because there was no incentive to produce. We're now slowly trying to recover our markets."

Indeed, last year Venezuela saw a 643 percent growth in export volume, with 632,000 quintals (one quintal equals a hundred pounds) of regular coffee shipped, compared to 85,000 quintals exported the previous year. About 93 percent of that is sold to the United States, while the rest goes to Europe.

Yet Venezuelan coffee currently sells for only about US$1 per pound -- the lowest of Latin America's major producers -- and...