The Panama Canal Authority opened the plant as a part of their Environmental Economic Incentives Program supporting development in its watershed communities

Panama City, Panama – Last week, the Panama Canal Authority helped open the first coffee processing plant in Las Gaitas, Capira, Panama as part of its Environmental Economic Incentives Program (PIEA), a land-titling program supporting communities in the Canal watershed. Coffee farming and planting has helped many fight poverty in Panama, and the plant is the Canal’s latest move in improving livelihoods along the waterway and within its watershed.

“The journey to this point has been long and full of challenges,” said Canal Administrator Jorge L. Quijano. “But it remains a journey that has also helped us learn and deliver support to hundreds in our watershed.”

Administrator Jorge L. Quijano toured the new coffee processing plant last week
Administrator Jorge L. Quijano toured the new coffee processing plant last week
Quijano noted that farmers producing coffee on land granted to them by the PIEA program had to grind and roast their beans more than three hours away from their farms. The new plant, only about an hour from the Canal watershed, saves these farmers crucial time and money.

PIEA, established in 2009, offers land titles and training programs in the Canal watershed to local farmers, allowing farmers to care for the wooded areas, protect and enrich the soil and reduce erosion in the watershed. Within PIEA’s agroforestry program, the Canal works with coffee producers to increase their cultivation and production through classes, seminars and site-visits, and has allowed for the planting of more than one million saplings of improved robust coffee in about 2,220 hectares of an estimated 95 communities.

In response to this program, the Association of Coffee Producers of the Ciri and Trinidad Rivers Sub-basin of the Panama Canal (ACACPA) was created in 2013 to facilitate the commercialization of coffee. Five years after its creation, the new coffee plant offers ACACPA producers equipment for processing their coffee – including a toaster, grinder and sealer to package products.

Thanks to the PIEA program and this new coffee processing plant, the Canal is providing economic incentives and sustainable production models that not only help farmers create greater economic opportunity, but also ensure the broader sustainability of the watershed, thereby keeping the Canal, and global maritime trade, running smoothly.