Guatemala SHB Huehuetenango

Huehuetenango is a municipality in the western highlands of Guatemala, running up to the border with Mexico and encompassing a lot of microclimates across its undulating hills and valleys. Spanish is spoken here, but it is not unusual to hear Mam, highlighting the Mayan ancestry of the area.

Fedecocagua is a secondary co-operative formed of 148 primary cooperatives, that is, coffee farmer-based organisations. This equates to around 20,000 members. These (the primary co-operatives) typically form to help provide access to agronomists, wet processing facilities, seedlings and microfinance support. Above them, and generally formed of members of primary co-operatives is a secondary co-operative, that works together to provide dry-milling facilities, greater quality control and the all-important access to a global customer base.

A regional ‘type’ coffee is a great way to work with a number of primary co-operatives to produce something that is distinctly regional in character yet with enough volume to ensure consistency year round. The QC team at Fedecocagua do the heavy lifting of cupping hundreds of samples before expertly blending and bagging ready for export.