I have heard that columbia Keep there best stuff for domestic use and send the not so good stuff out to everywhere else.
does anyone know if this is true or not?
Hmmm, I always heard that with both coffee and tea exports, the best stuff leaves the country, with the lower grade varities used for domestic consumption.
Generally speaking the best stuff leaves the country. They don't consume enough coffee in Columbia to use it all number one.... number two the buyers who actually sell the coffee know that Columbians won't pay for the beans what Americans and Europeans will - so they're not going to be selling at loss... of course not... they sell it to other countries.
This is relatively common with many types of agricultural commodities. Many places where Vanilla is grown - the local people could in no way afford it. They don't consume it in the vast quantities that the western world does - they don't even have the same culinary traditions that make use of the quantities that the way the larger populations in the developed world do.
Pretty much the same goes for tea. A cup of Darjeeling tea in Darjeeling itself costs almost nothing... what local would pay the price westerners pay for the stuff... very, very few. The sellers and growers know this... so they sell the best stuff at premium dollar overseas.
I managed to convince a guy I used to work with that it was grown in Yorkshire!
He was sceptical at first, but after I explained about south-facing slopes, and keeping the young plants in greenhouses to protect their tender roots from the frost, and suchlike, eventually he was persuaded. I put a lot of hard work into that one, but it was worth it!