Coffee

One of the quiet delights of hiking around Guatemala has been passing though coffee fields. Its grown widely, sometimes on family plots of only a few trees and ranging up to hillsides with lots of crop. Passing a coffee bush I'll look for a nice ripe red berry or two to pop into my mouth. It's not that they're that tasty - most of the berry is seed ("the bean") and the fruit part around it is rather tasteless - but hiking a dusty trail is easier with something wet in your mouth. But more than that it's a chance to experience something that's ubiquitous in my home culture but to experience it before it's total transformation from the natural.

So for you coffee lovers out there I have some good news: Guatemalan coffee producers are getting double the price per pound they were getting just last year. I don't know whether that reflects "fair trade" pricing or if it's just the going rate on the international market. The locals I get this from don't have quite that sophisticated an analysis.

"And what is that price?" I hear you ask. This years it's 310 qetzales per quintal, which works out to 38 cents a pound. Last year it was 160 q/q, about 19 cents. How much are you paying?

That 38 cents covers maintaining the trees, picking the beans, delivering them for processing, removing the fruit, washing, sun drying and bagging for delivery. The coffee pickets, of course, make only a fraction of that total. Juan Valdez actually does pick each bean by hand - trees ripen unevenly so there is no efficient way of mass harvesting the crop. Pick. Pick. Pick. Each bean goes into a bag getting heavier and heavier until Juan walks it down the hill to deliver to the truck for weighing and goes back for more. His rate? 50 quetzales per quintal - 6 cents a pound.

By the way, the good news that the price has doubled comes with a catch - heavy rains this year during the pollination season means the resulting crop has been cut on half.

So if your seller raises the price your beans by 19 cents a pound, now you know why. It's that other $11.50 I can't explain.

Just thought I'd add a little flavor of Guatemala to your morning coffee.

Avi