ABSTRACT
Farming is a major sector of the Colombian economy, accounting for 20 percent of 1995 GDP while providing employment for 40 percent of the country’s workers and generating 50 percent of export revenues. In 1990, there were 3,855,000 ha under cultivation (Table 13.2), with 50 percent planted in ‘technified’ or technologically-enhanced crops (Ministerio de Agricultura, 1992). Note that ‘technified’ is a construction of the word ‘technification’, which is a back-formation from the Spanish tecnificación. The practice of technification in Latin America was spurred by the spread of coffee leaf rust – Hemileia vastatrix, a fungal disease of coffee known in Spanish as la roya – in the 1970s. Technification projects were assisted with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). In coffee production, technification goes beyond the intensive management of shade and shrubs to the application of agrochemical inputs and the introduction of higher-yielding, disease-resistant varieties of coffee that respond well to those inputs. Like the ‘Green Revolution’ that was expected to provide miraculous high-yield agriculture through new strains of rice, wheat, and corn, the sun coffee revolution has failed to fulfill its promise (Hull, 1999). The results have been increased erosion, increased runoff laden with pollutants, significant reduction in wildlife habitat, and increased exposure of workers to hazardous chemicals (Smithsonian Institution, 1996). The percentage of technified coffee acreage – based on 1993 estimates – ranges from 10 percent in El Salvador and Haiti to 40 percent in Costa Rica and nearly 70 percent in Columbia (FAO, 1996).
