Coffee & Landmines
Major coffee producing regions of the world have also been the sites of bitter conflict, including Colombia, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Vietnam, Laos, Uganda, Angola and Ethiopia. Tragically, areas with the heaviest concentrations of landmine use and the best coffee producing regions frequently overlap.
One of the best places to grow high quality coffee is in the mountains, the same areas that in times of war are strategically significant as borders between territories, or as strongholds for opposing forces. Landmines are a particularly effective weapon in steep terrain where movement is limited to mountain passes and trails that traverse agricultural areas – the same areas where coffee farmers live and work.
In Nicaragua and Honduras some of the fiercest fighting took place in the central and northern highlands along the Nicaraguan-Honduran border. As combatants from both sides moved back and forth through the mountain passes, they routinely placed landmines to block troop movements, to disrupt supply lines, and to protect radio transmission towers.
Mine placement by combatants on the move is done quickly and few records are made of their exact locations, making landmine removal extremely difficult. Flooding and mudslides move landmines around, and rapid vegetation growth conceals them view.
After years of de-mining efforts, many areas of Nicaragua and Honduras are now classified as mine-free, but it is impossible to know for certain that every single mine has been located and removed.
Roberto Daniel Gonzalez, a coffee and banana farmer near Jinotega, Nicaragua, lost his eldest son to a landmine in 2006. His son had gone out to a field just two hundred meters from their home to clear more land and expand the farm. He stepped on a landmine and was killed.
The mine that killed Roberto’s son had been lying undetected in this corner of their farm for years.
Colombia, the second largest exporter of coffee in the Western Hemisphere, is the only country in the Western Hemisphere where landmines are still being laid. It has the third highest rate of landmine victims in the world. And, it represents one of the only places where the problem is getting worse. In four years, the level of mine incidents doubled, from 627 in 2002 to 1,110 in 2005.
Colombian coffee farms covers 800,000 hectares of cultivated land, and the Colombian coffee industry supports 500,000 farmers. Guerilla and paramilitary groups intentionally use landmines to displace citizens by mining villages and farms and then mining houses and roads to prevent their return. While landmines are a persistent problem throughout Colombia, they are particularly concentrated in the mountainous coffee areas. 23% of Colombia’s mine related incidents have occurred in Antioquia, the heart of Colombia’s coffee growing region.
In Africa, landmines kill, injure and disable over 12,000 people per year. It is estimated there are 40 million landmines throughout the continent. Over 140 million people live and work in mine-affected areas. Throughout Africa, landmines have brought once thriving coffee industries to a near standstill.
Angola has experienced more than four decades of war. Landmines were used extensively and indiscriminately throughout various conflicts. When the 2003 Peace Agreement was signed there were an estimated 6 million landmines deployed and over 4,200 mine fields in place.
The coffee industry was a casualty of this conflict, with Angola’s coffee production barely passing 1% (3,000 metric tons) of levels set in 1974 (228,000 metric tons) when it was the world’s fourth largest producer. Two-thirds of the coffee presently produced never reaches market because of mined or damaged roads that make transportation costs for some regions more expensive than the coffee itself. Thousands of acres of farmland remain untouched because of mines.
Vietnam and Laos are new to the ranks of major coffee exporters. Huge coffee plantations in both countries now occupy land once covered with landmines, and UXOs (unexploded ordnance). De-mining efforts have cleared much of the land, but not all of it. Falling coffee prices around the world means all land must be cultivated to remain competitive, and the presence of landmines often does not serve as a deterrent to use. In Laos, UXOs are the biggest problem. Over 2 million tons of bombs were dropped on this tiny country, and many of them remain in fields, still active and posing a threat to the lives of the farmers and their families, and to future economic development.
The issues confronted by coffee farmers around the world in mine-affected areas must be addressed. In recent years landmine removal and mine awareness have received a lot of attention, but landmine victims’ assistance has not. People who are injured by landmines need emergency medical care, surgery, and long term physical care. Most will need a prosthetic limb or some form of mobility aid and rehabilitation services. Prosthetic limbs need to be replaced every few years, and cost hundreds of dollars, well beyond the financial reach of most coffee workers. And people need assistance to return to work, to their families, and to community life.
The Coffeelands Landmine Victims’ Trust provides assistance to coffee workers and coffee communities. It also provides a way for all of us to learn more about the experiences of others, and what we can do to help people to help themselves.
The Universal Impact of Landmines in the Coffeelands:
- good land often goes uncultivated
- coffee trees in mined areas go unpicked
- mined roads cannot be used to transport good to market
- people lose their homes and farms
- people live in constant fear of stepping on a landmine
- landmine survivors and their families spend the rest of their lives dealing with the physical and emotional impact of landmine injuries
- agronomists who help farmers improve their crops and means of production are fearful of going into areas that are mined
Links to Fact Sheets by Country
Click on the links below for more details about the impact of landmines on these major coffee-producing countries: