For coffee lovers, the Dominican Republic represents a sort of paradise. Coffee grown in the high mountains, organic coffee and country-roasted coffee are part of the delights of our local brews. However, the presence of the “coffee rust fungus” has been detected all over the country since the end of 2012, affecting nearly 85% of the nearly 50,000 farms that produce coffee beans. Agronomists say that if this continues, this year’s coffee harvest will be seriously affected in its quality as well as in quantity, with crop losses estimated as high as 25%.
The director of the Dominican Coffee Council (Codocafe) Jose Fermin Nunez, is on a trip to Costa Rica in order to learn about specialized techniques to treat the fungus that produces the disease that causes the leaves and the fruit to fall off and affects the ripening of the fruit and even its aroma.
Other leading coffee producing countries in the region, Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica have declared national emergencies in response to the outbreak of Coffee Rust. Although the Dominican Republic has been one of the last countries to register the complete spread of the disease, agronomist Toribio Contreras said that the authorities were still not planning to declare a national emergency.
Contreras, who is a member of the Technology Coordination Unit of the Plant Sanitation Emergency Program for the Handling and Control of Coffee Rust, told Diario Libre that 708 brigades have been tackling the problem – as of 15 January 2013 – in a total of 4,564 coffee farms. As of yesterday, Monday 18 February, they had treated more than 200,000 tareas. (Tarea=629 mt2)
But a lot more is needed. During a meeting held in January with specialists and Codocafe directors, issues with fuel restrictions, transportation, the availability of the tools for the work in the coffee fields and in the spraying equipment and the lack of computers and office supplies was reported.