Any coffee roaster who has traveled beyond the tourist confines of origin country knows the paradoxical reality present in coffee growing communities. Those that grow the world’s highest quality beans are usually cursed to wake up to some of the worst tasting coffees known to anything with taste buds. Most times this is true for pretty much all of coffee growing countries except for the privileged who are able to buy imported coffees. The rest drink Nescafe.

The reason - fairly simple. Countries who depend on coffee as a main source of their GDP, export the highest quality beans for sale to the highest bidder. As well, most producers do not have the available credit to purchase a roaster, bags, and grinder nor access to a market.

In an $80 billion industry, producing countries receive only 20% of net revenues—farmers earn less than 10% (according to Food First). Deviron and Stefano point out in the Coffee Paradox that the top five coffee multinationals, Kraft, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Sara Lee, and Tchibo control 69% of the global coffee roasting industry. This doesn’t leave much of a market for the rest of us in a country which holds 1/5th of the world’s coffee drinkers and much less for our unfortunate coffee growing friends.

Moreover, due to the poor economy of almost all coffee growing countries, most homes purchase the least expensive option - instant coffee usually dumped from far off - cheaper locales, such as Vietnam. And at the ironic bottom of the pole, are most coffee growing communities, consuming defected beans they can not sell in the market. Roasting them over an open fire they then hand grind and brew em’ cowboy style - boiled in water.

But there is hope for our coffee drinking companeros south of the border. Small scale growers are hooking up propane tanks to old drum roasters, dropping in batches of freshly picked and processed green beans and roasting up some specialty coffees to be distributed throughout their home countries. Sure, they won’t size up to the well-balanced bright taste of our export friendly friends up north but they are much better then what they’ve been drinking down south. I had the unique opportunity to backpack across the Mayan Highlands of Southern Mexico and Guatemala to check on the status of this burgeoning wave of truly handcrafted coffee roasting.

My first stop was at Maya Vinic - our oldest partner growing co-op and very good friends. Maya Vinic is a great example of a cooperative that is working toward vertical integration. The nearly 500 growers own their own bodega, processing center and have a small roasting facility. Not bad for being in the coffee export business for just 7 years! All coffees that don’t pass through the processing plant as export grade are returned to their roastery where they throw them in their 30 pound roaster for use in their national market. Distributors in Merida and Mexico City sell the beans under the brand “Maya Vinic” to restaurants, grocery stores, and hotels throughout the country.

After a day of crossing the border at La Mesilla and negotiating the various mountains, ravines, and rivers that make up North-West Guatemala I arrived in Xelajú (or Quetzaltenango as the Spaniards renamed it after conquering the Mayan Mam population). This bustling highland city acts as the center of commerce for the various indigenous communities that ring the ten mountains that hover over it. There, I met with Cafe Conciencia - an organization formed to help commercialize the coffee of 4 different growing cooperatives scattered in the mountains of San Marcos and Quetzaltenango.

At the end of a long winding road that cuts into the side of a mountain, the road up to Tajulmulco Organic Coffee Organization of Small Organic Coffee Growers Maya Mames (Apecaform) is the most dangerous I’ve been on since traveling the “death road” in Bolivia. Over the course of two hours we climbed the side of the Tajumulco Volcano, weaving between boulders trying to stay between the cliff and the side of the mountain. The roasters at Apecaform have a great history. For nearly 10 years they roasted their beans over an open fire. As the wooden shack that housed their “roaster” would fill with smoke, shifts of women took turns inhaling the smoke and turning the barrel by hand. Today, thanks to the Fair Trade Fund at Catholic Relief Services, the women now have a brand new roaster and much better coffee to drink each day.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 1st, 2008 at 5:01 pm and is filed under Mexico, Guatemala. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.