Guatemala Montellano

The Cooperative Aroma del Buen Cafe Montellano are to be found in Yepocapa, Chimaltenango, a small town of around 17,000 at the bottom of Volcan del Fuego. It has moved locations due to previously being wiped out when the volcano has erupted, with the last eruption majorly affecting the town being in 1974 where it found itself over 1 metre under ash.

Coffee here is picked but he farmers then brought as cherry to collection stations, where it is sorted and graded before being pulped, and dried. In areas where farmers do not have the equipment for pulping themselves, cooperatives play a vital role in maintaining access to services and ensuring that quality can be upheld, and Mr Maximiliano Garcia Lopez, as representative for the Cooperative works to to provide access to exporters so that once the coffee is processed, it can be sold further afield to achieve better prices than are typically found in an internal market.

The cooperative produces average between 1200 – 1500 quintals of parchment coffee each year, across nearly 280 hectares they have that grow coffee. The land is split amongst the 128 men and 59 women members, with the average producers owning 1.5 hectares. A quintal is 100lb (roughly 46kg) of parchment coffee that is then hulled before shipping, meaning a weight loss of around 20%.