Senator Wilton Guerrero (PLD-Peravia) is taking the side of small coffee producers in protesting the Medina administration initiative to create the National Coffee Institute (Instituto Nacional del Café – Indocafé) that would replace the present National Dominican Coffee Council (Consejo Dominicano del Café – Codocafé). Guerrero says that the bill that would abolish Codocafé is a mistake.
Meeting with coffee growers at the installations of the Movimiento Cafetalero y Acción Comunitaria (Movicac) in Baní, Peravia, the legislator said that any initiative on coffee growing has to take into account the small producers because they are the most directly involved in the development of the sector. “Others can be interested in the coffee sector as a business profit center, but the people that work the fields do so to bring food to their tables,” he said.
He said that he himself comes from a family with a coffee growing tradition. Guerrero said he is hopeful that the coffee farms can be restored to their historic productivity using the appropriate technologies.
Participating in the meeting and speaking out against Indocafé were Movicac president, Jorge Guerrero; the executive director of the Federación de Caficultores y Agricultores para el Desarrollo Agrícola in San Juan de la Maguana, Tony Luciano, and the president of the Núcleo de Asociaciones de Caficultores y Agricultores de San Cristóbal (NACAS), Cristino Lorenzo.
Also present was the deputy director of Codocafé, Electo Santana.
Representatives of these groups said that the bill that the President Danilo Medina sent to the Senate would exclude the coffee-growing organizations and take over the responsibility for drafting and implementing coffee policies in the country. Indocafé is being proposed as an autonomous government agency that would be affiliated to the Ministry of Agriculture. It would be funded with a tax of RD$1 per quintal of harvested coffee but will be able to receive donations, loans and transfers.
Coffee growing in the Dominican Republic is at an all time low. Coffee farmers attribute the collapse of the sector to the coffee rust disease and the lack of effective support from Ministry of Agriculture.
18 April 2017
