Around 30 Tucumán growers are moving ahead with experimental coffee plots in the Pedemonte, and agreements with Cabrales, Martínez and Cinco Hispanos point to purchases within three years. The province aims to keep part of the $500 million Argentina spends each year importing coffee.
The project to develop a coffee with a Tucumán origin is gaining more and more backing. Around 30 growers are already working with experimental plots of between 1,000 and 9,000 plants in areas of the Pedemonte, and the province has signed agreements with Martín Cabrales, Martínez and Cinco Hispanos for them to purchase the production in the medium term. The goal is for part of the $500 million Argentina spends each year importing coffee to stay in Tucumán.
Behind the push is Juan Casañas, an agronomist, producer and vice president of the province's Instituto de Desarrollo Productivo (IDEP). The official backs the production arm of Osvaldo Jaldo's government and embraces the coffee project: “It's a small province, 22,300 square kilometers, and you have to get a little more creative,” he said.
History backs the bet. There are records of coffee plantations dating back to the Jesuit era, and wild bushes survive in backyards or lost in the forest, confirming that this soil and this climate can get along well with “black gold.” Casañas was won over by the initiative when a friend served him a cup of coffee harvested on his farm.
Tucumán coffee is grown as an intercropped crop, without encroaching on the forest. “You don't clear-cut, you thin it out — that is, you remove the branches and small shrubs and plant coffee,” Casañas explained. Native to tropical zones, the crop is spreading ever farther from the Equator as temperatures rise: “This is a sort of benefit of global warming,” he described.
Tree cover is key: it protects the plants from frost and excessive heat. That trait allows farms that are already productive to diversify. “If you have a farm with 200 hectares of lemon and another 200 hectares where you can't do anything else because it's forest, you'll be able to grow coffee,” he noted. Although water availability in the Pedemonte is limited to the summer, soil quality, cover and shade make the crop perform well; on the most technology-equipped farms, irrigation is already used to standardize production and harvest dates.
The initial work relies on experimental production plots set up on private estates and evaluated together with INTA and the universities, to gather information and define guidelines for environmental management, harvest and flowering uniformity. Today, growers who still see it as a “hobby” coexist with citrus or grain operations betting on large scale.
To bring order to that growth, the province created a coffee growers' registry and credit lines. Casañas highlighted cooperation among producers as a tool “to unify criteria and to have an origin coffee that in the future we can sell as specialty coffee.”
The first to come forward was Martín Cabrales, of the company of the same name, a major player in Argentine coffee; then Martínez and Cinco Hispanos joined. The agreements are based on the commitment to buy Tucumán production once it starts generating raw material in volume, which Casañas expects within three years, since many growers prefer to replant their seeds to obtain more plants rather than send a small amount to milling.
The industry is also approaching production to secure quality raw material and a future market. That is why, along with training, work is under way to “educate” the Tucumán palate: the province is the third-largest coffee consumer in the country.
The horizon is not only supplying the domestic market, but making a coffee with added value. It is estimated that Argentina imports coffee from Brazil, Colombia, Vietnam and other producing countries for about $500 million a year. “We want the $500 million that leaves to stay in Tucumán,” Casañas stated.
There are also approaches with Catamarca, Misiones and Jujuy, where incipient projects exist. The idea of building an Argentine coffee-growing north is shared by scattered growers, and work has begun on the possibility of joining forces someday. “No one makes it alone. We all want to be first, but there are no egos here,” Casañas said, to keep the aspiration from remaining individual, artisanal projects that generate no labor, do not mobilize the industry and have no impact on the trade balance.
