The Co-ops We Work With
Guatemalan
Farm: Acodihue
Process: Washed
Elevation: 1400-2200 MASL (Meters Above Sea Level)
Region: Huehuetenango
Farm Info: ACODIHUE is a Fair Trade and Organic certified organization established in 1996. The cooperative is made up of top-level associations and community committees representing the individual producers. ACODIHUE promotes respect for their specific differences, such as rural life, diversity of cultures, gender and religious beliefs.
Specifically, ACODIHUE is focused on poverty reduction and food insecurity of it's members. It contributes to projects co-financed by international and national organizations in the areas of health, education, food security, gender equity, agricultural production, and restoration/conservation of the environment.
ACODIHUE serves 16 municipalities in the department of Huehuetenango, two municipalities in San Marcos, and two in Totonicapán. Over 40,000 farmers are members of this Coop.
ACODIHUE's coffee comes from 71% of indigenous women coffee producers in the mountainous territory of Cuchumatanes, Huehuetenango, with an average altitude of 1,500 meters (4,920 feet) above sea level. They utilize a traditional way of processing: natural fermentation, manual selection and drying in the sun.
Region Info: Huehuetenango is located in Western Guatemala bordering Mexico. It is extremely diverse and known for producing some of the best coffees in Latin America due to its climate, altitude, water sources, and traditional varieties. A range of offerings come out of Huehuetenango, including chocolatey volume offerings and fruit-forward microlots.
Washed Processing Info: The Washed process varies greatly across the growing regions of Guatemala due in large part to the different terroir and terrain that exists from place to place there, but for the most part the primary difference in style is in the length of time that the coffee is allowed to ferment. Generally speaking, coffee is picked ripe and depulped the same or the following day, then allowed to ferment for anywhere between 12–48 hours, depending on the climate. The coffee is then washed clean of its mucilage and spread on patios or raised beds to dry.
Mexico
Association: Women Comon Yaj Noptic Cooperative
Process: Washed
Elevation: 1000-1800 MASL (Meters Above Sea Level)
Region: Chiapas
Association Info:
We've been sourcing coffee from several different cooperatives in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, along the buffer zone of El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve, one of the world's most diverse forest reserves. In the highlands of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas, the reserve contains Mesoamerica's largest continuous cloud forest, and is a refuge for thousands of plant and animal species.
Within this buffer zone is the Comon Yaj Noptic cooperative, which was founded in 1995 by a group of smallholder farmers from indigenous groups in the area. (Comon Yaj Noptic means "all of us think.") Today there are about 160 producer members. The producers here have the advantage of many ideal conditions, including good altitude, obviously a very lush environment, and high-quality coffee varieties like Typica, Bourbon, and Caturra. The grower members are passionate about quality and even though this region is not always thought of for exceptional lots, there is strong microlot potential from the groups we've been partnering with here. The area is very close to the border of Guatemala and that country's famous coffee region Huehuetenango: Some of the best of what we taste from those coffees is possible here as well. The organization earned its organic certificate in 2003 and its Fair Trade certification in 2009.
This lot is specifically from the women members of the cooperative with a premium being paid directly to them to contribute to gender equity in the region.
Region Info: Chiapas is the southernmost region of Mexico. The mountains of this region span into bordering Guatemala and much of this tropical forest is the protected Triunfo Biosphere Reserve. This area is humid and tropical, inhabited by small communities of producers who have formed cooperatives to gain stronger representation in the coffee market. These producers take pride in their land, growing coffee organically through methods passed down from generation to generation.
Washed Processing Info: As is common throughout Central and South America, coffees in Mexico tend to be processed as Washed lots. While the details may vary from place to place, typically the coffee is depulped the same day it's harvested, then given a 12–18-hour fermentation in tanks or buckets before being washed clean of mucilage and dried. Drying typically takes place on patios or in mechanical dryers.
Peru
Cooperative: Lima Coffee
Process: Washed
Elevation: 1650-1800 MASL (Meters Above Sea Level)
Region: Cajamarca
Co-op Info:
Rony Lavan is an ambitious and quality-driven cupper who has spent his career trying to carve out better and bolder coffees from small producers in Peru. While the country is emerging as a specialty market after many years of focusing on bigger lots and certifications, Rony's passion is with identifying and developing the top scores and the best cups. Green-coffee buyer Piero Cristiani met Rony before Piero was buying coffee for Cafe Imports, and the two have not only stayed professionally connected all these years, but they have also become great friends.
As president of the Lima Coffees exporting organization, Rony has already established himself as standing at the fore of microlot-quality coffees in Cajamarca. His first year with Lima Coffees, he entered the national competition and won; with the introduction of the Cup of Excellence competition to Peru in 2017, the country is poised to enter the international spotlight for its finest offerings. Rony and his coffees will be the ones to watch.
Region Info: Though coffee arrived in Peru relatively early—in the middle of the 1700s—it wasn’t cultivated for commercial export until nearly the 20th century as demand from Europe rose due to a significant decrease in coffee production in Indonesia. British presence and influence in the country helped increase and drive exports. In the early 1900s, the British government took ownership of roughly 2 million hectares of land from the Peruvian government as payment on a defaulted loan, and much of that land became British-owned coffee plantations.
As in many Central and South American countries, the large European-owned landholdings were sold or redistributed throughout the 20th century. Farms became smaller and more fragmented, offering independence to farmers but also limiting their access to resources and a larger commercial market. Unlike many other countries whose coffee economy is dominated by smallholders, Peru lacks the organization or infrastructure to provide economic or technical support to farmers—a hole that outside organizations and certifications have sought to fill. The country has a remarkable number of certified-organic coffees, as well as Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance, and UTZ-certified coffees. Around 30 percent of the country’s smallholders are members of democratic co-ops, which has increased the visibility of coffees from the area but has done little to bring incredibly high-quality lots into the spotlight.
As of the 2010s, Peru is one of the top producers of Arabica coffee, often ranked fifth in world production and export of Arabica. The remoteness of the coffee farms and the incredibly small size of the average farm have prevented much of the single-farm differentiation that has allowed for microlot development and marketing in other growing regions, but as with everything else in specialty coffee, this is changing quickly as well. The country’s lush highlands and good heirloom varieties offer the potential for growers to beat the obstacles of limited infrastructure and market access, and as production increases, we are more likely to see those types of advancements.
Washed Processing Info: The vast majority of coffee in Perú is Washed, and many producers own their own wet-milling equipment, though smallholders may also deliver cherry to a central processing unit or cooperative for processing. The coffees are usually depulped the same day they are harvested and given a 12–18-hour open-air fermentation before being washed clean of mucilage. (The fermentation time may be longer in cooler areas at higher elevations.) Drying styles vary in Perú, and coffee may be dried on patios, raised beds, in parabolic dryers, or mechanically
*Information provided by Cafe Imports