Collaborative Sourcing When coffee is cultivated and harvested from small family owned farms, exporters play a critical role in ensuring quality and fairness. The collaborative sourcing team of Terra Coffeas Mexico and an export company called Galguera Gomez hits the mark on delivering high quality community lots with traceability and transparent pricing for farmers. Galguera Gomez has been preparing and exporting coffee since 1985 and specializes in preparing traceable Oaxacan lots and paying producers higher incomes for the quality of their coffee. Terra Coffeas Mexico provides post-harvest strategies and cupping expertise that has brought many talented producers into the specialty coffee fold. The model is the perfect hybrid where individual farmers take responsibility for farm management and the post-harvest process with support from Terra Coffeas Mexico, ensuring that each farmer has access to best practices. Growing Region This particular lot comes from families living near the municipality of Santa Maria Temaxcalapa that cultivate coffee on farms with just a few acres. Imagine traveling along progressively steeper and curved roads through villages, eventually arriving at a lush forest intercropped with coffee, bananas, corn, beans, and fruit trees. This Oaxacan coffee growing region known as the Sierra Madre del Norte mountain range is peppered with small coffee farms. Processing details During the harvest, each producer focuses on picking cherries at optimum ripeness. Then the cherries are delivered to a centralized wet-mill where they are sorted and floated in ozone-treated water to remove damage and clean the cherries of unwanted microbes. Then the cherries are depulped and undergo a 48-hour controlled fermentation using selected microorganisms. After fermentation, the parchment is placed on patios to dry between 24-48 hours under the direct sun. After this time parchment is moved to raised beds under shade to finish the drying process that could take between 14-17 days until coffee achieves the 11% moisture. Exporting preparation Dried coffee is transported to the Galguera Gomez dry mill facility where coffee is received, cupped and selected for export. The Galguera Gomez preparation ensures traceability and quality control throughout the post-harvest process, which is a vital resource for establishing higher prices for producers.
