First stop in Honduras, the little municipality of Corquín in the Copán region. A verdant pine forest greets us; we can already sense a natural environment for coffee cultivation. The little town of Corquín and its inhabitants exude a desire to see the quality of their original coffees known throughout the world.
We meet a man who is alive with energy and has long experience on the land, Oliverio Lara Lopez. The plantation he looks after came to him from his grandfather, who was of German origin. Oliverio taught me a lot about the history of coffee’s introduction to this region.
Next we visit the plantation of Wilfredo Estevez Molina. To this producer, what’s important is that his coffee plantation be surrounded by fruit trees. Every space is used to maximize coffee production. We observe the production of a natural coffee with a simple method for drying the coffee.
I would like to thank the ARUCO producers’ association for welcoming us, for sharing their knowledge, and for sharing their coffee with us.
Then we make a second visit, long awaited, to Marcala, a region whose coffee I already knew of, having several times purchased coffee from the COMSA Cooperative. One of the advantages of traveling by road is that you can observe the differences in the country’s vegetation. First observation: there seems to be a problem there with the pines, as we see large swaths of the mountains completely deforested. After asking a few questions, we confirm that, yes, there is an insect that attacks the tree’s bark. In such cases the tree has to be cut down.
Second observation: the Marcala region seems to have a much drier environment. After meeting with Luis Rodolfo Penalba of the COMSA organization and visiting the transformation site, it is easy to see the quality of work performed by the transformation team in order to maximize the value of the incredible amount of work coffee producers must do to produce a coffee of such quality.
The meeting with Juan David Chavez D, President of the cooperative, and the visit to its plantation, perfectly complete our understanding of the efforts that these men and women must employ to obtain the quality their coffee possesses. The finca of Jocelinda Perez is an example of using different methods for coffee.
The finca LA COLMENA has been able to diversify in order to fill the coffee-production gap caused by a very widespread disease called rust. The finca also produces sugar cane syrup using natural methods.
These encounters were made possible thanks to the support of COMSA, and of the Romuel family, who acted as guides for our visits.
In order to fully grasp the community work carried out in the region by these organizations, whether in schools, in technical training, in the biodiversity approach, I invite you to discover all of these projects by visiting their Web site.