GUATEMALA FT-FLO/USA ORGANIC ATITLAN RENACIMIENTO SHB EP – 30275-1 – SPOT COSEATAC

Coffee Background

Good supply chains deliver tasty coffee. This is certainly the case with coffees arriving courtesy of the Federación Comercializadora de Café Especial de Guatemala (FECCEG), an umbrella organization that helps smaller cooperatives gain access to the international market. This particular lot comes from Cooperativa Agrícola Integral El Renacimiento R.L., which operates in the Quiché Mayan communities located in the municipality of Nahualá within the department of Sololá, which encircles Lake Atitlan. Cooperativa Renacimiento was founded in 1987 and has 70 members (33 women) with farms that average 1.5 acres in size. The cooperative has focused attention on training producers on the best organic practices to manage their farms and diversification projects like beekeeping. In addition to making their own organic fertilizer and harvesting honey, producers use their own micro-mills to process harvested cherries, which includes hand sorting, depulping, fermenting, washing and drying the coffee to 11 percent moisture. At this stage, FECCEG steps in to support the cooperative with transportation, warehousing and cupping analysis, and later provides the preparation for export.