SWD Guatemala Todosantarita

Todosantarita is a cooperative based near San Antonio Huista in Huehuetenango, with farms on the slopes of Sierra de los Cuchumatanes. The name translates as All Saints, referring to a celebration of the saints that is centered around a yearly horse race.

Forming when seventeen people came together to forma a group that would become the cooperative as we know it now, it has grown to encompass 131 members as at the beginning of 2022. The average age of the farmers there is 50, though in an area that is struggling to engage the next generation, 20% of their members being between 22 and 35 is seen as a positive attribute. The average farmsize for each farmer is 2.13 hectares, with a total size of 280 hectares under coffee as the cooperative. 18 hectares of this is Marsellesa, around 60,000 plants, with the majority of the rest being Caturra, Typica, and Bourbon.

Plants are generally thought to be best at 4-6 years old. The local indigenous Mam culture, which is heavily present in the community, practices traditional coffee production. This means some of the producers use the lunar cycle to analyse the best time to prune and plant coffee trees. It is thought the internal water systems in the coffee are affected by the moon, and scheduling planting of seedlings, pruning and stumping when water lies at the base of the tree is better for recovery and growth.