Maize moves uphill in Colombia

Driven by strong government policies, low global coffee prices, and high-yielding, disease resistant varieties from CIMMYT, the maize area in Colombia’s coffee-growing regions has risen during 2002-07 from around 3,000 to more than 50,000 hectares, providing work for field laborers and profits of nearly US$1,000 per hectare for coffee producers.

It is said that every crisis holds a seed of opportunity. When coffee prices for Colombian producers fell from close to USD 3 per kilogram in mid-1989 to about USD 1.30 in the early 1990s, the ensuing economic crisis thinned the ranks of coffee farmers—after several years, only the most efficient remained.

But the need for greater efficiency has also brought innovation. In 2002, the National Federation of Cereal and Legume Producers (FENALCE), an organization with a long tradition of partnerships with CIMMYT, singled out maize as a smart bet to supplement coffee growers’ earnings. FENALCE, the National Federation of Colombian Coffee Growers (FEDERECAFE), and CIMMYT joined forces to pursue that aim. “After several coffee harvests, farmers must prune coffee plants to ensure high yields,” says CIMMYT maize specialist in South America, Luis Narro. “They’d been leaving those fields to weeds, during the 18 or so months the coffee plants take to grow back. It was proposed that sowing maize there instead could bring profits, as well as controlling weeds and erosion.”

Move to maize to boost income
In 2002 only 3,000 hectares of maize were being grown on coffee plantations, according to Narro. In 2007, more than 50,000 hectares of maize were harvested on Colombia’s 800,000-plus hectares of coffee lands. Two open-pollinated varieties, ICA V354 and ICA V305, both developed from CIMMYT sources, are currently the most widely sown. Joint efforts by FENALCE researchers and Narro have resulted in a high-yielding maize hybrid, FNC-3056, based largely on CIMMYT breeding lines, that resists tar spot and gray leaf spot, the two most damaging fungal diseases of maize in Colombia. FENALCE is producing more than 200 tons of seed of the hybrid this year, enough to sow some 10,000 hectares.

“With the region’s rich soils and good rainfall, and applying the same meticulous management practices they use to grow coffee, the farmers are harvesting upwards of
7 tons per hectare in maize grain,” Narro says. At the current price of USD 270 per ton for maize grain and with production costs of around USD 900 per hectare, including field labor costs, farmers are earning a net USD 990 per hectare of maize.

“That’s a good return on investment,” says Narro, “and field laborers get work at times they would otherwise be unemployed.” Colombia’s coffee lands consist largely of steep slopes, and so operations are done by hand. All farms employ many field workers throughout the year, even the small-scale enterprises which, according to Narro, are the most common. “Of the country’s 560,000 or so coffee growers, nearly 90 percent have less than 3 hectares of land, and the average is 1.5 hectares per farmer,” Narro says.

Supplying the seed farmers need
Strong and steady support from Colombia’s government, including President Álvaro Uribe, is contributing to the rapid rise in maize area. “Colombia imports around two-thirds of the roughly 4.5 million tons of maize it consumes each year,” says Narro. “Meeting more of this demand through profitable domestic production is of obvious benefit.” Farmers receive credit and insurance subsidies, and in 2005 Uribe launched an annual prize for maize productivity in coffee zones. The government is also offering producers loans and subsidies to replace old coffee plants. The federal goal is to replace plants on some 300,000 hectares—creating a temporary gap in coffee production on those lands, as the new plants come on line, that alternative crops like maize can fill. In 2006, Uribe spoke of reaching 120,000 hectares of maize on coffee lands.

A new, yellow-grained hybrid resulting from the FEDERECAFE-FENALCE-CIMMYT partnership—in the final stages of testing and certification and expected to be released in 2008—should provide an additional boost to maize cropping. “The currently available hybrid, FNC-3056, is white grained, of the type used to produce the popular maize flatbread known as ‘arepas’,” says Narro. “But there’s a much larger demand for yellow maize to supply the expanding poultry feed industry.”

For more information: Luis Narro, maize breeder (l.narro@cgiar.org)