President Luis Abinader has announced a RD$1 billion program to promote coffee growing, reduce poverty in rural areas, and improve Dominican coffee’s overall quality. Many people do not know that the coffee rust wiped out almost 100% of Dominican coffee trees. Coffee farms that weathered the blight were the exception, not the rule.
The truth is that for the past four or five years, the Dominican Republic has been a major coffee importer and brands such as Café Santo Domingo still market a few brands of select Dominican coffee beans, but most coffee sold locally is imported as coffee trees grow back.
The nationwide replanting program, crop husbandry and better crop management received a major boost this past weekend. At the ceremonies marking the beginning of the year’s coffee harvest, President Abinader announced a new support program and said it would funnel RD$1 billion in zero-interest loans to farmers so these could continue the good practices and increase acreages and open new farms.
The ceremony took place at a research center for improved genetics in coffee tree varieties run by Café Santo Domingo. Industrias Banilejas, the parent company for the major Dominican brand of coffee runs the Center for the Reproduction of New Varieties of Coffee in San Jose de Ocoa. The program’s target is to encourage small farmers to go into coffee planting to lower the poverty index in the southwest (Deep South) of the country.
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Diario Libre
22 November 2020