Sourcing Details: Want to support women in coffee? Here is one of those rare opportunities where all that is good about coffee intersect.
Simply a trifecta of: organic farm management practices; traceable to a woman producer in the Marcala region, a protected designation of origin (DENOMINACION DE ORIGEN CAFE DE MARCALA); and a meticulous post-harvest processing standard.
It all starts with a concept called Finca Humana (the Human Farm) at Café Organico Marcala, S.A. (COMSA), where the wellbeing of humans is the core objective and educating more than 1,500 producer-members to successfully live in harmony with nature is everywhere.
At La Fortaleza, the COMSA biodynamic demonstration farm, the focus of transferring knowledge takes place through week-long seminars called Pata de Chucho (pawprints left by a stray dog), which aptly reveals COMSA’s dogged exploration for human productivity in harmony with nature.
The trailblazing ideas for using organic matter to productively cultivate high quality coffee is only a sliver of what COMSA teaches about the power of nature through the Finca Humana philosophy.
COMSA dedicates funding from the proceeds of coffee sales to run a cutting edge International school dedicated to filling children’s minds with possibility, and training them to be the future leaders of Finca Humana. Individual Producer Details: Fátima Mercedes Maradiaga Rodríguez is one of the new trailblazers who has been brought up with the COMSA philosophy.
She has her own farm called Las Flores, where she cultivates coffee with organic farm management practices she learned at COMSA.
Fatima also practices meticulous harvesting standards, which includes selectively picking.
Harvested cherries are carefully hand sorted and floated to remove less dense and damaged beans.
Sorted cherries are macerated for 24 hours and then depulped and fermented in tanks for up to 48 hours.
After fermenting, coffee is placed on raised beds (skipping the washing stage to conserve water) to gently dry over a period of up to 15 days.
The results are an outstanding coffee worthy of being a single producer micro-lot. Exporting Details: Fatima delivers her dried coffee to COMSA’s warehouse and dry-mill facility where coffee is received, cupped and selected for export. Coffee is hulled and sorted by density and color in preparation for export.
COMSA has a fully equipped cupping lab and several Q graders who check the quality prior to shipping.
COMSA’s preparation ensures traceability and quality control throughout the post harvest process, which is a vital resource for establishing higher prices for producers.
