Who We Are
Sumapaz began with a simple question.
In 2017, the founders of Sumapaz noticed something that seemed worth addressing: most agricultural advisory services in the Colombian Andes were either too broad to be useful at the farm level, or too expensive to be accessible to mid-scale growers. The gap between what producers needed and what was on offer was wide — and it was costing people real ground.
The name comes from the Sumapaz páramo, the high-altitude wetland that feeds much of the country's water supply and quietly sustains the agricultural zones below it. It was chosen deliberately: the páramo does its work without announcement. That is the kind of presence we try to bring to our clients' operations.
We are based in Manizales, in the heart of Colombia's coffee region, and most of our work is rooted in the coffee sector — though we also advise on other agribusiness contexts where an honest outside view is genuinely useful. Our consultants have backgrounds in farm management, cooperative development, agro-export, and rural finance. Between them they have worked at every link in the chain, from soil to international buyer.
What we have learned from that breadth is that lasting change in agricultural businesses tends to start small and stay patient. We do not offer schemes or systems. We offer time, attention, and considered recommendations that reflect the actual conditions a client is working in.
The People
Our advisory team.
Lucía Castaño
Lead Consultant
Twelve years working with coffee cooperatives across Caldas and Nariño. Lucía leads our Field Read and Season Companion engagements and is most at home talking through production numbers on a Tuesday morning visit.
Javier Murillo
Market & Chain Analyst
Javier spent a decade working for an agro-export firm before joining Sumapaz. He leads the Value Chain Study service and brings a careful eye to the gap between what producers offer and what specific buyers are looking for.
Andrea Montoya
Rural Finance Advisor
Andrea's background is in rural credit and financial planning for small producers. She brings the cost-side perspective to all our engagements and ensures the plans we help clients build are ones they can realistically act on.
How We Work
Standards we hold ourselves to.
Strict confidentiality
All operational and financial information shared with us remains within the engagement. We document this in writing at the start of every relationship.
Independence
We do not earn commissions or referral fees from suppliers, buyers, or financial institutions. Our advice reflects what we actually think, not what benefits us commercially.
Written outputs
Every engagement ends with a written document — summary, roadmap, or assessment — that belongs to the client and can be used independently of us.
Transparent fees
Our service prices are published and do not change without prior discussion. Scope adjustments, if needed, are agreed before any additional cost is incurred.
Sector-specific knowledge
We do not apply generic business frameworks to agricultural contexts. Our team's experience is rooted in the specific realities of Colombian agribusiness and the coffee value chain.
Respect for client pace
We schedule and deliver work around the agricultural calendar, not around our convenience. Farming operates on seasons, and so do we.
Advisory rooted in agribusiness, built for Colombia.
The Colombian agribusiness landscape is shaped by altitude, microclimate, and a set of market relationships that have evolved over decades. Our work is calibrated to that reality. Whether we are looking at a single farm's production costs or mapping a cooperative's relationship with international buyers, we start from conditions as they are, not as a textbook would describe them.
Coffee is the sector we know most deeply. The shift toward specialty markets, the changing relationship between producers and export intermediaries, the growing importance of traceability and certification — these are topics our team has tracked and worked within for many years. When a producer asks us how to position their lot for a higher-value buyer, we are drawing on direct experience of what that process actually involves.
Beyond coffee, we have advised clients working in cacao, panela, and mixed horticulture supply chains. The common thread is that each engagement starts by listening before recommending, and closes with something a client can put into practice — not a report that sits on a shelf.