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U.S. and Colombian Governments Open Contest to Award “Best Alternative Development Coffee”
July 15, 2009
U.S. and Colombian Governments Open Contest to Award “Best Alternative Development Coffee”
To honor the culture of lawfulness in Colombia and support licit crops in the country, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Presidential Agency for Social Action and International Cooperation (Accion Social), the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) and the National Federation of Coffee Growers created a contest to find the “Best Alternative Development Coffee”. Participants will be high-quality coffee organizations and producers -as a result of alternative development- who best carry out the pulping, rinsing and drying processes, and meet minimum quality requirements upon delivery.
The contest will be judged by international judges. The winner and first runner-up will travel all expenses paid to the Specialty Coffee Association of America Fair in Anaheim, California on April 2010. Additionally, they will each receive $2,000 and $1,500, respectively. The second runner-up will be awarded $1,000 and the third and fourth runner-ups will each receive $500. The remaining five runner-ups will receive a machine for pulping, scythes or a Becolsub specialty machine.
Contestants will present their coffee lots at the warehouses of Almacafe before July 31, 2009. They may send them directly or through coffee grower’s cooperatives, together with the respective application, which may be obtained through the cooperatives, the ADAM and MIDAS projects offices and Social Action Territorial Units. The awarding ceremony will take place within the ambit of ExpoEspeciales organized by the Colombian Federation of Coffee Growers in Ibague, September 11-13, 2009.
Each producer will be able to participate with at least a lot of dry parchment coffee capable of producing 15 70-kg sacs of Extra 3-20 preparation coffee. That is, land lots of 2,000 kg of dry parchment coffee from a single coffee farm. Also, several producers from the same program may join forces to fill a land lot and enter jointly in the contest.
For more information on the contest and its requirements, you may contact Mónica Acevedo, contest coordinator at 313-1742 and 131-1780 in Bogota or e-mail her at monica.acevedo@acdivoca.org.co.