Coffee was Ana Fajardo's ticket to the good life.
She traveled in style to European capitals and sent her two daughters to US universities. She was attended by a cook and several maids at her coffee farm, drove in imported four-wheel-drives and was lavished with presents from local bankers at Christmas.
Today, Fajardo has laid off her domestic help, her foreman and her farm administrator, sends her daughters to a local university and has sold her city apartment. She says banks now refuse to give her loans.
"Coffee allowed us to live very well in the old days. Now coffee is loss-making," said Fajardo, 40, a third-generation grower.
Thousands of Colombian coffee growers are predicting farm closures, bankruptcies and social unrest as international prices wallow at all-time lows.
Toiling under mounting debt, many growers in the Andean nation's once-affluent coffee regions are abandoning their crops. Small numbers are even uprooting coffee trees to grow coca -- the raw material for cocaine.
For 100 years, coffee has been at the heart of Colombia's economy and culture. It created a prosperous rural middle class and spurred the industry and banking sectors. It also paid for schools, roads and electricity in rural areas, creating islands of peace in a country ravaged by a 37-year war.
But now, growers say, a global coffee glut that has forced prices down for four years is bringing the heyday of Colombian coffee to a bitter end.
"The age of coffee is over," Fajardo said.
Coffee-blessed land
Blessed with three Andean ranges and volcanic soil, Colombia offers perfect conditions for coffee, which was introduced here by Spanish Jesuits in 1723.
Its high-quality washed arabica beans -- individually hand-picked by farmers -- are coveted by coffee connoisseurs around the world for their rich flavor and acidity.
Coffee brought wealth to a country struggling with enormous gaps between the rich and poor, setting up a welfare state in Colombia's central coffee belt.
But under the weight of a world glut, coffee prices on the New York's Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange have slipped from a high of US$1.37 a kilogram in May 1997 to historic lows of just US$0.1964 a kilogram on Monday.
The country's 500,000 farmers say prices are ruinous. Production costs in Colombia are hovering around US$0.42 per kilogram.
Deep in the coffee belt, the bounty created by coffee is still apparent, although beginning to fade.
World War II-era jeeps piled high with coffee bags hum along well-paved roads outside Manizales, the tidy capital of Caldas, the country's No. 2 coffee region. Most farms have electricity and running water, and growers send their children to schools and health centers paid for by coffee.
Juan Valdez, the smiling fictional spokesman for Colombian coffee for more than 40 years, smiles down from roadside billboards that draw attention to public works projects, such as bridges and aqueducts, which have been funded by coffee.
Dying way of life
But little by little, job opportunities in the coffee industry, from tasters to technicians, are growing scarcer as coffee plantations have been forced to shrink or close.
The coffee-laden jeeps and the pickers who can be seen beating among the vast hillsides of glossy green coffee trees with their bags of scarlet beans may be, industry officials say, part of a dying way of life.
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