El Descanso - Colombia 2015 Verified listing

CoE Rank: 12

Farm: El Descanso

Farmer: José Heider Contreras Mancipe

Birth Place & Date: Guadalupe, March 19, 1985

Age: 30

Parents: Clara Inés Mancipe Perilla & Luis Antonio Contreras (d)

Siblings: MAIRA CONTRERAS MANCIPE, DAVID CONTRERAS MANCIPE, FERNANDO CONTRERAS MANCIPE, ANA BERTILDE CONTRERAS MANCIPE, LUIS ANTONIO CONTRERAS MANCIPE, ALBERTO CONTRERAS MANCIPE.

Wife’s Name: Adriana Berdugo González

Children: 0

Academic Level: High School

Farm: El Descanso

Vereda (Rural District): FILO SALAZAR

Corregimiento (Municipal Sub-division):

Municipality: Guadalupe

Department: Huila

Total Area Grown with Coffee: 2.68 hectares

% planted with resistant varieties (Colombia & Castillo): 50%

% planted with susceptible varieties (Caturra): 50%

% of Young Technologically Advanced Coffee Plantations: 70%

Certification: FLO

Other farm crops: banana, yucca

Post-harvest processing (“Beneficio”): Traditional, 20-hour fermentation

Drying: in the sun

Score at Cup of Excellence 2015: 86.98

Farmer’s Biography:

I was born in Guadalupe, Huila, on March 19, 1985. My parents are from the Boyacá department, they arrived in the municipality of Guadalupe fleeing the war of the National Front caused by the political parties of the time. My mother was born in the municipality and years later she married my father, going to live in the La Selvita farm, where people worked with livestock and the family began to grow. Part of the family was born there. Later they bought the El Descanso farm, where we started working with the red cherries of coffee that have given us so many joys to date.

The family grew in the coffee environment and received a great blow from life with the death of our father when I was only 4 years old. Then my mother took the reins of home and with the help of my elder brothers, with eagerness and dedication, they began to work, giving us the possibility of continuing our education until I finished high school. Henceforth my mother shared out the farm so that each of us should take responsibility and start forging an own way. I started planting 500 trees of the Caturra variety and later 1800. These were my beginnings as a farmer and by year 2000 I got my coffee grower’s ID card, which identifies me as part of this great coffee-growing family. This allowed me to access a credit for renewal of coffee plantations provided by the Colombia n Coffee Growers Federation. In 2012 I got for the first time an Incentive to Rural Capitalization (ICR) to renew crops with the Castillo variety.

I am grateful to the Extension Service, which has insisted we enter competitions and guided us to improve production processes. For that reason I entered the Cup of Excellence competition with a Castillo lot.

While my neighbors said that this coffee did not feature the attributes needed for a competition of this category, thank God I reached the 12^th position, what produced me a lot of joy that I shared with all my family and community. It is a dream to which I put all the joy and I hope many farmers in my municipality get inspired to take part and thus highlight the attributes of our coffee, which are accompanied by the effort and sacrifice of the whole family.

I consider this success a blessing from God to my work, my family’s effort and the renewal with resistant varieties. I am sure that this victory implies better times for the coffee sector of Huila and especially of Guadalupe.