Solar dryer - a way forward for better quality and income of producers

In the Sustainable Coffee Project in Colombia, supporting project farmers to build solar dryers is an important activity that has brought a highly visible impact.

600 families in the coffee-growing municipalities of Agustin Codazzi, Becerril, Chiriguana, Curumaní and La Jagua de Ibirico participating in the Sustainable Coffee Project are all living in a very difficult situation with a lack of basic services - water, sewage, electricity, etc. Though they are highly dependent on income from coffee and bananas, the unfavorable climatic conditions and extremely poor infrastructure make producers suffer from big losses in terms of both coffee quality and volume.

Most of the farmers in the region have an area planted with coffee of less than 3 hectares, often living far away from the cooperative's buying stations. Normally, it takes a producer 3-4 hours by car and 2-3 days by horse to get to the cooperative's stations. Therefore, proper on-farm processing is very important to assure good quality coffee and allow it to be preserved for some time.

In the past, local producers used to sell their coffee to small collectors who passed by regularly and paid very low prices without evaluating the quality. The reasons that local producers accepted the situation was not only the distance to the cooperative and poor transportation conditions but more importantly because their coffee quality was mostly very low due to improper drying and as such not attractive to quality conscious buyers such as the cooperative. The frequency of heavy rains during the harvest often results in serious quality degrading as local producers used to dry coffee on the ground. Coffee beans got over-fermented, didn't dry properly and foreign matter was often found. So what could be a solution for this situation?

The answer to the above question was a solar dryer, which is not too complicated to build and doesn't require energy for operation but can make use of the sun and natural heat.

With a wooden frame and plastic cover, a solar dryer is a proper drying tool that allows regular turning of the coffee beans; ensures good ventilation and protects coffee from foreign matter on the ground and re-wetting from rain.

A solar dryer as propagated in the project

Depending on the size, each solar dryer costs about 1.6 million Pesos including the labor for building. For the local producers, this is quite an investment but it is for a relatively long-term use (it has an expected lifetime of about 5 years) and the dryer can be used not only for drying coffee but also for other crops such as corn and black beans. Presently, the project covers 100% of the costs for all materials, about one third of the total cost, because project producers are very poor. However, the pre-condition for obtaining a dryer is that after the training provided by the project, farmers help each other to build the solar dryers themselves and the labor is their own contribution to the project. This creates a good reason and condition for producers to learn to work in a group and strengthen the community relationship.

Famers helping each other to build a solar dryer

With 450 solar dryers installed in the project (one per producer), most producers have expressed their appreciation of the improvements they have experienced. "The producers' feedback is very positive and we are happy to see that they start sharing with non-project producers about how to build solar dryers and the benefits of the tool" -said Ms. Adriana Mejía Cuartas, Director - Europe, National Federation of Colombian Coffee Growers.

The added value created through proper drying with the help of solar dryers together with the project support on reconnecting farmers to the official coffee and input supply markets have created very good impact on the improvement of coffee producers' position in the market. With better coffee quality and improved awareness of the possibilities they have in the market, local producers nowadays make informed decisions on selling and creating added value instead of depending on small collectors.

Ms. Adriana Mejía Cuartas also shared her view: "Even though the project can not provide enough financial support to all the producers, we are involving more producers in the training so that they will at least have the knowledge on how to build up solar dryers. We believe that the visible benefits brought by solar dryers will inspire non-project farmers to replicate this approach from our demonstration producers." 

Econmically, the investment makes perfect sense. Each drier costs a total of 1.6 million Pesos, of which 650,000 is funded by the project. On average, price premiums as a result of better quality coffee amount to 1.2 million per season per farm, so 80% of the total investment is recouped in year 1. The driers have an expected life-time of 5 years, the investment is more than earned back.