The more directly we work on coffee projects, the more we need to visit coffee regions in the off-season to make plans for the harvest.
This was a quick trip in 2012 (made even shorter by delayed flights and missed connections in Houston, ugh) to visit Acatenango, Antigua, and Huehuetenango and check in on our coffee partners there.
This doesn’t always work out the way we plan. The economics of the harvest are guided by forces beyond our control. The myth of the small “microlot” and “Direct Trade” buyer is that you pay a great price for quality, and that is a sort of trump card that wins the game. You beat the market, you beat the commercial buyers, you score a win for yourself and the farmers. Of course … you do it for the farmers.
The fact is that the local coffee markets, for cherryEither a flavor in the coffee, or referring to the fruit of the coffee tree, which somewhat resembles a red cherry.: Either a flavor in the coffee, or... coffee, or as in GuatemalaGuatemalan coffee is considered a top quality coffee producer in Central America. Due to our proximity to Guatemala, some of the nicest coffees from this origin come to..., for parchmentGreen coffee still in its outer shell, before dry-milling, is called Parchment coffee (pergamino). In the wet process, coffee is peeled, fermented, washed and then ready for drying... coffee, are guided by harvest volumes, by the global market and demand, by the floor prices set by the big buyers, by the standards of the big buyers (Volcafe, Ecom, Nespresso, Illy, Olam, etc).
So yeah, you pay a super great parchment price for a small volume of coffee. In the meantime a farmer can make a quick sale of cherry or parchment that wasn’t even carefully picked or selected, and get a decent price paid on delivery or in a couple days. Your rep. pays after a preselection or after you cup the sample – mayger 2 weeks or 3 weeks or a month later? And the farmer produces 40 quintales but you just like the 3 quintales from mid harvest delivery. What does the farmer do with the rest? What do they get paid on average for all their coffee, for all their labor, for the whole crop.
Coffee is complicated. We don’t pretend to understand it all, and yeah as a small buyer we just have to focus on what we do and hope it works for everyone in the supply chain.
But we understand that we are just part of a bigger picture. We try to do our best. We hope that works for the farmers we buy from too. It has to or we aren’t going to get the coffee we need and the quality we need. But the narrative roasters spin about their ‘goodness’ rings a bit hollow.
Small buyers who pay well are important. They are not the answer. Maybe, maybe … they / we are part of an answer though. –Thompson
We went up to Cuilco, which is right at the border with Mexico. The altitudes were a bit lower. But there was a lot of Bourbon variety coffee planted, as well as Caturra, which is a Bourbon offspring. A farm dog, a mixed breed “chucho”, at Las Camelias. Shot on film, image of one of the local farm dogs at this San Pedro Necta farm. El Profesor and friend look out over the community of El Turbante in San Pedro Necta In the house of a coffee farmer, a harvest painting. Huehuetenango town. In Patzun, the upcoming crop is on the trees and looks fairly bountiful. This is Caturra variety This way, that way, the other way. Directions at Las Camelias, the Beneventes family farm. I want them to add another for Oakland, which takes a mere 71 hours by road to reach At La Esperanza mill, one of the local farm dogs. They called him “demon dog” for his markings, but he was a sweet heart. Juan Jose buzzes around on a rather exotic trials motorcycle, which he claims not to know how to ride, but muy observations make me think he does. If you don’t know what trials are, well, google it. Yes, that’s me. I don’t know how they found a picture of me to paint on the side of that business in Quetzaltenango Guatemala. But somehow it happened. I blame the world wide internet. One of our favorite lots from Acatenango area last year has grown into a new relationship for us. With an unusual mix of coffee varieties in the ground and some above-average altitude for coffee in the area, Juan Jose’s farm seems promising to us. The home made tortillas and salsa he serves aren’t bad either. Pigs go to school to, what, get butchered? What do they eat at lunch, other pigs? An attractive painting at a marraneria in Acatenango, on my way to a farm nearby, on a preharvest trip October 2012 At Las Camelias, a lot of improvements have happened since I was here in May. The shade trees and coffee have been trimmed to allow more light and air circulation, and to avoid trapping moisture. All this helps to combay fungus that attacks coffee, Roya and Ojo de Gallo. It also rejuvenates the plant by promoting new herbaceous growth. Pache cultivar, a Typica mutant, shares the darker coloration of the new leaf and the elongated leaf form of Typica. Losing the light, and trying to get to Las Camelias, which was a really nice coffee from the current crop. We are hoping to expand our offerings from them, and the crop looks good on the farm. El Profesor on his farm in the San Pedro Necta area, high on a ridge above the older, well-established mills. He has 3 sisters who also have plots here at respectable altitudes, and that look well-maintaned. Mostly his farm is planted in Caturra and Pache cultivars. For some reason, the sunsets are always spectacular in this area. Back in the city of Huehuetenango, the circus had just rolled in. I guess clowns drive custom trucks these days. 1980 Meters that is. I haven’t seen much coffee growing at those atitudes in Guatemala, and usually it would produce little and not ripen well. I can’t vouch for this coffee farm either, having never cupped it. And I didn’t particularly care for the way they maximized planting on such steep slopes, without protection for erosion and such.