CRISIS IN COLOMBIA
Farmers in Colombia face a far different future.
Battered by low prices and high costs, some are contemplating switching to other crops or selling up, despite tens of millions of dollars in government aid.
Jose Eliecer Sierra, 53, has farmed coffee for three decades but low prices have forced him to look at alternatives - Hass avocados and cattle among them.
"Avocados are in high demand abroad and it's one of the options," he said, standing amid some of his 41,000 coffee trees on a mist-shrouded mountainside near Pueblorrico, in Antioquia province.
"Another very tempting option that people are thinking about is cattle - knocking down coffee trees and planting grass for cows," said Sierra.
It is not the first time Colombian coffee growers have looked to other crops for a better living. Many in the south - sometimes under pressure from armed groups - abandoned it for the more lucrative coca, the raw ingredient in cocaine, though coffee has since rebounded.
For some growers, even switching crops may not save them.
Uriel Posada, who worked for more than 30 years as a house painter in the United States, dreamed of coming home to Colombia to grow coffee. Now his land is up for sale.
"I'm up to my neck in debt," the 52-year-old said, gazing up the steep hill where his 30,000 coffee trees are planted.
"Brazil has a huge advantage over us - the land is flat and they have machinery," Posada said. "Here I have to pay a human being to go tree by tree, branch by branch and pick the red berries."
Avocados and cattle are good alternatives, Posada said, but require start-up funds and transition time that many local growers do not have.
"I'll sell, pay what I owe and go. End my Colombian dream."
