FLY CROP 2025 IN HUILA
The fly crop in south Huila was promising, with estimates of volume and quality at their highest. But as we approach harvest time, things aren’t going quite the way we’d hoped.
Since March 2025, rainfall totals have been well above seasonal norms, especially in May/June right as the coffee flowering/fruiting stage comes in. Let’s see how those above-average precipitations affect coffee quality and producers revenue.
1- FROM DRY TO WET PARCHMENT
When the rain just won’t let up, even with the covered drying structures most producers have on their farms, it becomes nearly impossible to dry coffee down to the ideal 11% moisture.
What we’re seeing now is that many farmers are delivering their coffee right after washing—skipping the drying stage altogether.
The problem? Very few specialty buyers in Colombia have the infrastructure to handle large volumes of wet coffee. That leaves commodity buyers as the only ones able to adapt to this shift. As a result, a lot of coffee that could’ve made it into the specialty market ends up getting blended into big, untraceable lots.
Watch our video to see how the commodity drying process works.
And, if you wanted a little reminder, here is a video showing how specialty coffee is dried. The comparison easily highlights the difference in care, time and resources. If there isn’t enough sun and wind, those methods don’t allow for the parchment to dry.
2- REVENUE LOSS
Even without factoring in a quality premium, selling wet parchment instead of dry represents a significant revenue loss for producers.
On average, producers lose around 22% in revenue when selling wet parchment rather than fully dried coffee. And when you add in the loss of potential quality premiums, that figure climbs higher.
The real winners in this situation are the commodity buyers. They purchase wet coffee at lower prices and dry it themselves in large-scale facilities, where economies of scale drive down the cost per kilogram.
3- QUALITY DEFECTS
When rain is constant during the final ripening stage, there’s a high chance that cherries will either fall off the tree or split open. In both cases, if those damaged cherries get mixed in with healthy ones, the risk of phenolic defects increases significantly.
In specialty coffee, a phenolic cup means the entire lot gets rejected.
*reminder*: phenolic defects aren’t visible—they can only be detected through tasting. It impossible to sort them out by machine or eye.
4- SETBACK FOR THE NEXT HARVEST
Another consequence of constant rain is its impact on the next harvest. April-June is usually when flowering for the main crop takes place. But when the rain is relentless, the flowers often get knocked off or aborted before they can develop, reducing yields of the next harvest.
WILL MINGA HAVE COFFEES THEN?
At Minga, we only buy fully dried coffees. That’s not easy right now—but some producers are choosing to wait it out, even if it means drying takes 30 to 40 days instead of the usual 10 to 15. With drying beds and patios full, they sometimes have to let part of the harvest go. It’s a tough call, but a few hold on, make it work, and get us coffees we’ll be able to share with you. After all that, the ‘specialty’ term hardly does them justice.
It’s a good moment to remember the risks producers face working with agriculture. The fly crop was shaping up beautifully—plenty of volume, excellent quality. But heavy rains late in the cycle changed the outcome. While many of us are adjusting to price swings, producers are constantly and increasingly dealing with another layer of uncertainty: the weather.