Bogota, May 2 - Coffee cargoes on the main highway between Colombia's core coffee-growing region and the Caribbean port of Cartagena are facing only slight delays, despite a protest by farmers aimed at blocking the road, police and coffee exporters said this week.
The farmers in the north of Antioquia province are protesting the campaign of aerial spraying with weed-killer aimed at eradicating the coca plant, the raw material for making cocaine. Local media estimate that approximately 4,000 coca farmers have left their farms to protest in the town of Taraza.
Last week, local authorities imposed a night-time curfew and an alcohol ban in an attempt to control the disturbances, following fighting between the farmers and the police.
"Coffee continues to flow normally from Cartagena. This highway is the most direct route to reach the coast, but there are other options," said Jorge Lozano, executive president of the National Association of Coffee Exporters of Colombia, or Asoexport.
"You have to take precautions and go during the day, and maybe wait two or three hours to go through in a convoy, but it's not that big a problem," said Juan Albero Arboleda, a grower with 300 hectares planted with coffee in Antioquia.
Antioquia is Colombia's largest coffee-growing province, according to statistics from Colombia's National Federation of Coffee Growers, or Fedecafe.
But the protests are taking place in the far north of the province, well away from the main coffee-growing areas.
On Tuesday one of Colombia's top cocaine traffickers, Víctor Mejía, was killed in the area by an elite group of police.
A spokesman for Colombia's highway police told Dow Jones Newswires, "The situation is currently calm ... traffic is flowing normally."