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The Oficina de Cafés de Puerto Rico: How the Island Regulates, Protects, and Develops Its Coffee Industry

The Oficina de Cafés de Puerto Rico is an office of Puerto Rico's Department of Agriculture, created to bring the Department's work on coffee planting, growing and harvesting under one body. It was created by Law 78 of 27 July 2019, codified at 5 L.P.R.A. § 323 and following, and its full text is published by Puerto Rico's Office of Management and Budget. A separate office in the same Department, created by Law 311 of 2002, works to prevent the illegal import of coffee; its staff inspect, investigate and audit.

This article describes what the law actually says.

A long three-storey Art Deco building with the words Departamento de Agricultura on its central tower, behind a railing fence and palm trees.

The Puerto Rico Department of Agriculture building in Santurce, San Juan, photographed on 7 August 2020. Photo: The Eloquent Peasant / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Why the Office was created

The law's own statement of motives sets out the crisis it answered.

Before Hurricanes Irma and María in September 2017, the 2017–18 harvest was expected to be the best in five years, reaching 100,000 quintales for the first time in that period. After the storms, the law states, that harvest was expected to reach barely 10,000 quintales.

The law puts the losses at at least 85 per cent of production, and roughly 18 million trees destroyed — 80 per cent of the coffee trees standing before the hurricanes. It gives farm-level income losses of over $27 million, plantation losses of over $75 million, and a total exceeding $100 million.

It also records that Puerto Rico would produce less than 20 per cent of the coffee consumed on the island.

An aerial view of a rural roadside with damaged houses, a stream and debris across green fields.

Damage from Hurricane María in Puerto Rico, September 2017. Photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture / Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

In 2021 the Secretary of Agriculture estimated that 7,000 workers would be needed to pick the coffee planted after Hurricane María; that year, 56 visas were approved for foreign workers on Puerto Rico's coffee farms, according to the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo.

The coffee zone

The law's statement of motives lists the zona cafetalera as 28 municipalities: Adjuntas, Jayuya, Maricao, Utuado, Yauco, Lares, Ciales, Morovis, Barranquitas, Coamo, Orocovis, San Lorenzo, Vega Baja, Manatí, Barceloneta, Florida, Las Marías, Mayagüez, San Sebastián, Guayanilla, Ponce, Peñuelas, San Germán, Santa Isabel, Juana Díaz, Añasco, Moca and Villalba.

Citing the 2012 USDA Census of Agriculture, the law records 4,671 coffee farms on 33,213 cuerdas, employing on average 10,000 to 12,000 workers. The law adds that there were about 45 beneficiadores and about 65 roasters licensed to produce and pack coffee.

The road entrance to the Hacienda Cafetalera Santa Clara plantation complex in Yauco, Puerto Rico, with the coffee mill at left, recorded by the Historic American Engineering Record.

Entrance to the plantation complex, with the coffee mill at left, Hacienda Cafetalera Santa Clara, Yauco. Photo: Jack E. Boucher, HAER (Library of Congress), public domain.

The video below, from the University of Puerto Rico's Agricultural Extension Service, shows the 2025 Fiesta del Acabe del Café in Maricao, one of the 28 municipalities; it is in Spanish.

Watch: EVENTO | Fiesta del Acabe del Café 2025 — Servicio de Extensión Agrícola

How the Office is organised

Section 1.03 places the Office within ADEA, which the law calls the Administración de Desarrollo Agropecuario (the agency's own name is the Administración para el Desarrollo de Empresas Agropecuarias), sharing its human resources and administrative systems.

The Office is directed by an agronomist with experience in coffee, qualified as a Director of Agricultural Programmes, appointed by the Secretary of Agriculture in consultation with the Governor, and reporting directly to the Secretary.

The Junta Asesora

Section 1.05 creates an advisory board of nine members, all serving ad honorem:

  • the Director of the Office, who presides
  • one representative recommended by the Secretary of Consumer Affairs (DACO)
  • three representatives of coffee growers, recommended by the Asociación de Agricultores de Puerto Rico
  • two representatives of buying processors (beneficiadores compradores)
  • two representatives of roasters

Candidates from the trade must present a letter of recommendation from at least 10 per cent of licensed registered members of their sector, and must show that more than 51 per cent of their coffee business falls in the sector they represent. Members other than the Director are appointed by the Governor with the advice and consent of the Senate.

Terms were staggered at the start — three members for five years, three for three, two for two — with successors serving six-year terms.

A black-and-white view of the domed Capitol of Puerto Rico across an open lot, with cars in front.

The Capitol of Puerto Rico in 1977, from its National Register of Historic Places record. Image: National Park Service / Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

The board meets no fewer than four times a year and sets the Office's priorities by vote: support programmes for growers, education, the use of funds generated by the Compra Venta programme, incentives, and research and development projects aimed at production, farm-level productivity and quality.

It reports annually to the Secretary of Agriculture and to the Senate of Puerto Rico before 30 April.

After an atmospheric event or other act of nature, Section 1.08 requires the Office to convene the board in emergency session within ten days, to draw up a support and recovery plan. The same section makes the Office responsible for emergency programmes to restore coffee farms after storms or pest attacks.

The money

Section 1.04 sets, by formula, a budget for the Office's programmes. It must plan, budget and administer a budget made up of at least 50 per cent of the net income of the Coffee Compra Venta Programme, or $50 for every quintal of semi-roasted coffee imported — whichever is greater.

That budget is for programmes, initiatives and incentives for buying, planting and producing coffee. It does not cover administrative costs, payroll or the running expenses of the Office, ADEA or the Department.

Section 3.03 adds that the Office operates on income generated by ADEA's Compra Venta programme together with other funds appropriated to the Department of Agriculture.

Prices — who actually sets them

Section 3.04 adds a new subsection (r) to Article 8 of Reorganisation Plan 4-2010. It requires the Secretary of Agriculture, through the Office, to keep the costs of fertiliser, inputs and the wider cost structure of growing coffee under review, and at intervals of no more than two years to submit a report on farm-level production costs.

Where the Secretary considers it necessary, that report is accompanied by a recommendation and a request for revision of the guaranteed minimum prices for growers — addressed to the Secretary of DACO.

A 2022 Senate resolution quotes the Secretary of DACO as saying he had received no such report while in office.

So the Office studies costs and recommends. The Department of Consumer Affairs (DACO) sets the minimum prices under its own organic law; its order on coffee prices is Orden 2026-007 of 2 October 2026.

Programmes brought under the Office

Section 3.01 transfers to the Office the functions and staff of ADEA's coffee-related programmes, including:

  • the Coffee Compra Venta and Marketing Programme
  • the Crop Protection Programme
  • the Agricultural Machinery Incentive Programme
  • the Coffee Cupping Laboratory
  • the Coffee Seed Protection and Distribution Programme
  • the Coffee Fertiliser Programme

Existing regulations, orders and circulars governing those programmes remain in force until the Secretary changes them.

Specialty coffee and the certified mark

Section 1.09 requires the Office to establish, by regulation, the mechanisms for supporting, promoting and registering specialty green coffee for export, using the standards of the Specialty Coffee Association, and to set up quality-seal registration and laboratory validation recognised by the SCA. The law gave the Office one year from its approval to adopt and file those regulations with the Department of State.

Chapter 2 provides that the Office will promote the register of certified specialty-coffee marks, and sets interim rules until the Office adopts its own regulations. A producer registering voluntarily must meet SCA requirements and the Office's regulation; certification is renewed at the end of each harvest; and where the term is used, the packaging must state that the coffee is 100 per cent Puerto Rican. The Department of State is authorised to pursue registration of the certified mark with the World Intellectual Property Organization, and holders of a certification pay $200 to the Secretary of State, in addition to the processing fees. Reglamento 9173 was filed on 12 March 2020.

The law defines Café de Puerto Rico as coffee wholly harvested in Puerto Rico, containing no imported coffee and not adulterated with any other fruit, grain or ingredient.

What the law replaced

Section 3.05 repeals Law 232-2015, the law on origin registration for Puerto Rican coffee.

Claims this encyclopedia could not source

  • That the 2017–18 harvest was the lowest in modern history. The law records about 10,000 quintales; the superlative was not found in any source.
  • A rule capping how much imported coffee may be blended into coffee sold as Puerto Rican. DACO's Reglamento 8578 requires the label to state the percentages of Puerto Rican and imported coffee; no cap was located.
  • The findings of the Comptroller's audit DA-19-07 of ADEA (14 November 2018). The audit exists, but its text could not be retrieved, so no finding is reported here.

Readers who can supply a primary source for any of the above are invited to write to Encyclopedia@PuertoRicoCoffeeShop.com.

Sources

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