The Production for Wellbeing (PpB) program has supported, as of September 30, 178,687 coffee producers, of which 66.5 percent, that is, 118,879, are indigenous, reported the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture and Development Rural within the framework of this October 1, International Coffee Day.

Production for Wellbeing provides direct support to coffee growers in 11 states of the Republic; Each producer receives 5,000 pesos, and the program is aimed at strengthening the peasant economy in a constant situation of volatile global coffee prices and helping producers to face the phytosanitary problems of rust and CBB.

Of the total number of coffee producers supported, 66,781 are women, that is, 37.4 percent. The states that top the list in number of beneficiaries are Chiapas, with 87,979 producers; Veracruz, 39,323, and Oaxaca, 20,598. The other entities are, in descending order: Puebla, Guerrero, Nayarit, San Luis Potosí, Hidalgo, Jalisco, Mexico and Colima.

Likewise, Production for Wellbeing launched an Emerging Financing Scheme for Coffee last July, which has begun to operate with a link between the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Trusts Instituted in Relation to Agriculture (FIRA), National Finance Agricultural, Rural, Forestry, and Fisheries Development (FND) and the Mexican Association of the Coffee Productive Chain (Amecafé).

This scheme serves small-scale arabica coffee producers, mostly indigenous, with soft loans, and the goal for this year is 20,000 coffee growers.

The scheme is part of a Production for Well-being strategy: that of Promoting Access to Formal Financing for producers benefiting from PpB, and consists of annual credits of 10,000 pesos per hectare, with a limit of three hectares per producer and the possibility of renewal annual, and are granted through economic organizations of producers.

The purpose of the scheme is that organized producers have liquidity to sustain their productive activity in the face of the health and economic impacts derived from COVID-19.

At the end of September 2020, 11,830 producers with an area of ​​12,460 hectares in seven states have requested inclusion in the scheme, through 38 organizations; The applications are in the process of validation and evaluation, having dispersed credits for five million pesos to date.

On February 27, shortly before the national quarantine, the Ministries of Agriculture, Welfare and Economy, together with representatives of the coffee growers, installed the Intersecretarial Group for the Attention of Coffee Growing (GIC) to address the problem of this productive branch comprehensively. In this Group, the Emerging Coffee Financing Scheme was defined.

The GIC —which also integrates the Ministry of the Environment, FIRA, FND, the National Institute for Forestry, Agricultural and Livestock Research (INIFAP), the National Service for Agri-food Health, Safety and Quality (Senasica) and the Federal Attorney General's Office. Consumer (Profeco) - continues to meet, now virtually, and addresses, among others, the topics of ordering the market, obtaining fair prices, promoting consumption, access to financing, rehabilitation of agro-industrial plants and promoting the commercialization of small social enterprises.

In Mexico there are more than 500,000 coffee producers, located in 480 municipalities; 37 percent of them are women; nine out of 10 have properties smaller than two hectares; 65 percent belong to municipalities with an indigenous population, where conditions of poverty prevail, and 90 percent of their coffee is made from tall Arabica varieties grown under shade.

Mexico is a world pioneer in organic, fair trade and specialty coffee production. Coffee, in its shady and smallholding conditions, is a crop of great relevance for the conservation of soil, water and biological diversity.