Generales

By: Julián David Ospina Sánchez - Journalist
This is an immersion tour for international and national visitors. It will include academic and tourist activities in Medellin and Antioquia municipalities recognized for their coffee tradition. This Thursday, September 22nd, the University will receive 16 Norwegian visitors who will participate in the tour, an activity that arises from the academic experience of the Specialization in Coffee offered by Universidad de Antioquia. 

The route will include meetings with local businessmen, professors and students; tours of the crops; visits to producers and roasters; and tastings of the different coffees of origin. Photo: courtesy of delosAndes Cooperativa.

The Colombian Embassy in Norway received the news that Universidad de Antioquia was offering a Specialization in Coffee. From that moment on, the diplomats went about getting in contact with Professor Seneida Lopera-Cardona, coordinator of the postgraduate program. "The Colombian ambassador in Oslo, Ángela Montoya Holguín, was very impressed by the existence of such a specific program and asked for a virtual meeting with us which included national bean producers and roasters from the Nordic country", Lopera-Cardona said.

A virtual chat was then planned with professors from the University in Medellin, the Southwest Branch and 60 coffee roasters from Norway joined by the Colombian diplomatic group. "When the meeting ended, Ambassador Montoya had fallen in love with the landscapes of the Southwest and renewed her admiration for the postgraduate program, so she asked us to propose a project", noted the coordinator of the UdeA Coffee Specialization.

It was April 2020 when this idea, which will receive its first walkers on September 22nd, began to take shape. According to the dean of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical and Food Sciences, Wber Orlando Ríos Ortiz, they worked on something robust, supported by Universidad de Antioquia’s Faculty of Agricultural Sciences and International Relations and Regionalization offices.

The project named "Coffee Route Saber y Sabor, Immersion in Colombian Coffee, Universidad de Antioquia" was designed as an academic, cultural and tourist experience that includes a series of talks and conferences; meetings with local businessmen, professors and students; tours of the crops; visits to producers and roasters; and tasting of the different coffees produced in the region.

The pilot of the Route will get Norwegians that only consume coffee cultivated in Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and the African continent to know the Colombian varieties and establish business ties with the producers. In addition, this nine-day visit to different parts of Antioquia will leave the doors open for different national and international publics to travel the coffee roads of the department, pointed out Ríos Ortiz.

"This is a strategic exercise that will demonstrate the academic and scientific potential of the institution, this first time with a country like Norway, and it will link other actors to the coffee production chain", said Marcela Garcés, director of UdeA’s International Relations. She stressed that another added value of the Route is that it will welcome diverse audiences.  

Colombian Coffee in Figures

Ninety-four out of the 125 municipalities in Antioquia have coffee crops, according to data collected by the Faculty of Pharmaceutical and Food Sciences of Universidad de Antioquia.

There are 123,000 hectares of grain crops in the department. They represent 15% of the national production and the livelihood of 80,000 families in the region. 

Despite the different crises that the sector has gone through, Colombia is the third largest producer of coffee in the world after Brazil and Vietnam, with 13,500,000 bags of 60 kilos per year. In addition, in the specialty known as washed, mild arabica coffee, it continues to be the first global power.

Sharing knowledge about the entire coffee process will be one of the objectives of the Route. Photo: courtesy of Seneida Lopera-Cardona.

Starting Point

The first steps along Universidad de Antioquia’s Coffee Route Saber y Sabor will be taken by 16 Norwegians who participate as roasters, buyers or consumers of the bean. They will begin their journey in Ciudad Universitaria and visit the municipalities of Caldas, Andes, Jardín, Venecia, Girardota and Eastern Antioquia.

There will be nine days, starting on September 22, during which the walkers will have a plan of activities that will include a presentation of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical and Food Sciences and the project, roasting and tasting of coffee at the Sena campus of Caldas, conferences on the coffee culture in Antioquia and the history of coffee in Colombia at UdeA’s Southwest Branch, a presentation of the University’s project Women in Coffee in Girardota, a tour of the Experimental Farm Esteban Jaramillo, attached to the National Federation of Coffee Growers and a tourist visit to the municipalities of Andes and Jardín.

"The embassies of South Korea and Cuba in Colombia have already expressed their interest in having citizens from their countries in the next editions of the Route", explained the dean of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical and Food Sciences, who concluded that this connection with the rural territories will continue to be promoted nationally and internationally with flexible itineraries according to the public who shows an interest.