The President of the Association of Coffee Growers of Anzoátegui State, Orangel Lozada, denounced that due to the terrible conditions of the roads to the coffee producing areas of five municipalities in the state, they have had to transfer the merchandise “on the back of beasts” (pack animals, mule/donkey trains), which is quite expensive for them and ends up harming both them and the final consumer.
By La Patilla – Javier A. Guaipo
Jun 28, 2022
As he explained, renting a mule costs 10 dollars for each “carga”, a load of approximately 50 kilograms. However, he said that the situation would be totally different if the roads were in acceptable conditions for the circulation of vehicles.
“In the municipality of Sotillo, the areas of El Chispero and Alto Llano have not had a single car move around in about four years. The same thing happens in the Naricual Parish of the Simón Bolívar Municipality, where El Francés, Carinagua and other villages are cut off.”
Mr. Lozada specified that due to the collapse of the rural roads there are approximately 800 affected producers, counting only those who are part of the association that he presides over. “Now with the rains the roads that were only passable are ruined.”
For his part, Juan Salgado lamented that the requests for road improvements made to the State’s government, the Barcelona mayor’s office and other government entities have been totally ignored up to now.
“Bringing a sack (98 lb bag) of vegetables or coffee to the city is currently very expensive. Between all the processes we spend about 13 dollars per load and we have been left with, at most, a quarter of what our profit should be.”
Precisely for this reason, producers like Carlos Alcalá assured that since last year they have chosen to stop working in agriculture, since only in Naricual – where he lives – they have lost more than 300 thousand kilos of produce between “Chinese ocumo” (taro), white ocumo (Xanthosoma), among others crops.
It is worth noting that the farmers went to the state government on the morning of this Tuesday, June 28th, with the purpose of presenting their requests to the State’s Governor, Luis Marcano.
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