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  • Throughout its history, always working for coffee growers’ well-being, the FNC has substantially contributed to the country’s economic and social development.
  • The FNC has built or improved over 7 million infrastructure works, including housing, utilities, roads, schools, hospitals, clinics, sports centers, wet mills and dryers, among others.

Bogotá, June 27, 2017 (FNC Press Office) – With the motto “Living Coffee, Sowing Future,” the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation (FNC) celebrates today 90 years of existence as an institution that, in addition to working for well-being of coffee farmers and their families, has substantially contributed to the country’s economic and social development.

Ninety years of tradition, history, and leadership. As a democratic and participatory institution, the FNC represents today over 550,000 coffee farmers, who freely elect their municipal and departmental representatives every four years. It’s considered the world’s largest rural NGO. And as a model union, it is respected and even admired in Colombia and abroad.

Thanks to the coffee contribution (tax) paid per each pound of coffee exported, the FNC provides public goods and services that benefit all of coffee producers. Guaranteed purchase at the best possible domestic base price, in cash and near the farms; scientific and technological research by Cenicafé (which has developed more productive and disease-resistant varieties); technical assistance by the Extension Service; added-value strategies, companies and brands (such as Buencafé and Juan Valdez); quality control; origin protection, and promotion and marketing of Café de Colombia have been competitive advantages for the Colombian coffee sector in the global industry.

And all of this responds to the purpose with which the FNC was created in 1927, when visionary coffee farmers joined together to create a union that would represent them nationally and internationally, make coffee production, marketing and exports easier, and help them improve their quality of life.

For decades, coffee was the main export product and the coffee sector was the Colombian economy’s backbone. Today, the country’s export portfolio has diversified, but the coffee sector, strengthened by the FNC, continues being a powerful economic and social development engine, especially in rural areas.

Between 1944 and 2015, the coffee harvest value was 352 trillion pesos (today’s US$ 116.9 billion), which has spread as income among coffee-farming families and stimulated consumption of goods and services in over 590 municipalities (over half of the country’s), including food, clothing, footwear, housing, utilities, health, education, transportation, and entertainment, creating jobs and stimulating growth in other sectors.

Over 7 million infrastructure works

Throughout its history, by means of its departmental and municipal committees, the FNC has built or improved infrastructure works that not only enhance coffee growers’ quality of life, but that of people living in wide rural areas of the country.

According to historical records, from 1944 to 2015 the FNC invested in infrastructure over 7.6 trillion pesos (US$ 2.5 billion), more than the harvest value in 2016 (7.1 trillion pesos), of which 61% went to works of housing and utilities; 25% to construction and maintenance of roads, bridges and related works; 12% to education, health and community infrastructure, and 2% to production infrastructure.

The construction and improvement of over 6.6 million infrastructure works in housing, water supply, basic sanitation and electricity; 216,000 km of roads and bridges; almost 30,000 works such as colleges, schools, classrooms, teachers’ housing, school restaurants and sanitary facilities; 800+ hospitals and health centers; 1,700+ community infrastructure works (sports, social or community centers, youth residences, etc.), and 166,000+ production infrastructure works (mainly wet mills and dryers) have totaled over 7 million works over the last 90 years.

In addition, projects, programs and models regarding relevant rural education, school kits, business management, gender equity, and natural resource and biodiversity recovery and conservation have contributed to more sustainable coffee farming.

In this sense, the FNC has become a key partner for project implementations thanks to the effectiveness and transparency with which it manages and realizes its own resources and national and international cooperation ones.

With the strength of what has been built in 90 years, the FNC faces optimistically Colombian coffee farming’s challenges ahead, such as climate change (with increasingly extreme weather events), labor, generational integration, and increase of producers’ productivity and profitability, which requires a better income distribution throughout the coffee value chain with share responsibility of all the links.