El Porvenir LOT 1 - Honduras
COUNTRY: Honduras
FARM/COOP/STATION:El Porvenir
VARIETY: IH-90
PROCESSING: Washed
ALTITUDE: 1750masl
OWNER: Maria Ilda Garcia Aguirre
REGION: Intibuca
FLAVOR NOTES: plum, red grape, nectarine and brown sugar
ABOUT THIS COFFEE
At 1750 masl, Maria Ilda Garcia Aguirre grows the IH-90 variety on clay soil, with her average production per year reaching 25 bags. Maria gives credit to her family for the farm she owns, acknowledging her children and husband for supporting her through her journey in specialty coffee production. She is a hard worker and has put her heart into becoming an excellent coffee producer. Maria is very enthusiastic about switching her production to specialty, as coffees that are sold at low prices make it difficult for farmers to support their families. “My goal is to continue improving my farm and production, so I can keep on offering my coffees to you and provide a better life for my family”, says Maria. “I also want to eventually construct solar dryers”
Intibuca project (Text provided by our supplier Nordic Approach)
Coffees from Honduras can be amazing when they are from the right places and are processed well. They often have more complexity, depth and richness than other Central American coffees. Many specialty coffee buyers in Honduras are focused in and around the department (state) of Santa Barbara. We were hoping to expand our offering from Honduras, and decided to look at other regions to see what potential we could find. Intibuca stood out as a department with delicious coffees, and enormous potential to produce more if producers could find a market.
We have recently partnered with a group of 60 producers in the community of Pozo Negro, located in the municipality of Masaguara in Intibuca. These producers have organised themselves into a group who come together to learn and share knowledge. They elect a chairman every year who, for several years running, has been Wilmer Alexis Grau Montoya. As Joanne met with this group and heard from the producers themselves, their shared respect for Wilmer was clear. They hold regular meetings, to organize themselves and their production and to support each other in improving the quality of their coffee.
This group of producers is making an enormous effort, and reinvesting in their infrastructure on their wet mills, drying facilities and back into their production. This is an exciting development, as it allows for greater traceability and separation of high quality micro-lots, and is by no means ordinary for Honduran coffee producers. Our aim in working with this group is to find them a stable market for these coffees, and to assist them to further develop quality, and increase the amount they earn for their coffee over time.
COFFEE IN HONDURAS
Coffee arrived in Honduras on trading ships in the 18th century. While some small-scale farmers were growing coffee as a minor cash crop early on, banana remained the main cash crop in Honduras throughout the 19th century and into the beginning of the 20th. It was not until the late 20th century that widespread and more intensive coffee farming began.
Honduras is a small yet mighty coffee producer. The country boasts the largest per capita coffee production in the world. Beginning in 2017, Honduras began placing in third place for Arabica production volume globally. For this slot, they compete with Ethiopia—a country 10 times larger than Honduras. The two countries trade between third and fourth place annually, but the achievement is impressive, nonetheless.
The path to largescale coffee production has been littered with stumbling blocks for Honduran producers. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch, the second deadliest Atlantic Hurricane on record, had a catastrophic impact on coffee production in the country. In total, as much as 70% of agriculture in Honduras was destroyed. This widespread destruction led to food shortages, and damaged internal infrastructure made transporting coffee even more difficult.
Many farmers smuggled their parchment to neighboring Guatemala where they could fetch higher prices. Due to the slow recovery process, smuggling continued for several years after the hurricane struck. During that time, a lot of Honduran coffee, especially that of better quality that had the potential to fetch higher prices, was sold as Guatemalan.
More recently, Honduras has battled Coffee Leaf Rust (CLR). Like many other Central American countries, CLR began appearing in 2010, and the intensity peaked in 2012. Smallholder farmers—who compose 95% of coffee growers in Honduras—farm organically by default and with very little access to inputs that would help to minimize the impact of CLR. Furthermore, many of these farmers had aging rootstock and little access to seedlings or training in renovation practices. This meant that smallholder farmers in Honduras were disproportionally affected by the outbreak. Though the effects of CLR have lessened in recent years, the disease is still widespread and has the potential to devastate crop production, especially for smallholders.
Transport and processing infrastructure can also pose challenges. While Honduran farmers have been growing coffee as a main cash crop since the 1900s, export volumes remained small well into the 1980s, due in part to the difficulty of transportation for farmers and middlemen. This lack of infrastructure led to lower-quality production overall than in neighboring countries, which also created stigma against Honduran coffee.
Expansion of Specialty Production
Honduras has everything it needs to become a premier specialty coffee producer. The country has the right growing conditions, abundant fertile soils and soaring altitudes (nearly all farms are at more than 1,000 meters above sea level), plus a variety of microclimates.
Beginning in the early 2000s the industry began to focus on quality. Improved infrastructure (better mechanical dryers, centralized wet mills, an increasing number of solar dryers), quality control/assurance trainings (separating lots by qualities, cupping schools, etc.), the rise of specialty-focused exporters, increased volumes of certified coffees and the strengthening cooperative movement all have worked in tandem to make Honduran coffee ‘one to watch’.
This movement is helped along by a significant generational shift. Unlike many Central American countries, Honduras has a younger average age of producer. Many coops and exporters are run, today, by young, innovative, create entrepreneurs who have focused on quality and, importantly, collaboration with one another to achieve a common goal. This generation’s efforts have greatly improved Honduras’s reputation in terms of quality and their growth in demand internationally.
In addition to improving quality, these leaders have greatly improved productivity. Within 1-2 years post-CLR outbreak, there was a widescale investment in farm renovation, which is why volumes jumped massively in 2016/17 to record levels of production.
