Guatemalan Coffee

Guatemalan Coffee a proven friend to People and Planet

The tree huggiest coffee, clearly so, comes from a small social justice wholesale importer with offices in Alaska and Colorado. What makes this coffee unique is the very primitive nature of the small indigenous farmers who cultivate and pick by hand.

Their coveted trees find slow ripening shelter under the broad canopy of rain forests, high on volcanic mountainsides. In marginally accessible hectares of their cherished coffee trees, these gentle people do it all by hand. You will find no clear-cutting here, no chemicals and only natural fertilizers, no mechanized harvest or milling, no genetic modification. Insects and disease are less a problem at these high altitudes, just the birds and the bees and the cherry blossoms.

The High mountain Arabica cherries ripen slowly and sweetly. What is more, these poorest of the poor farmers find themselves the unwitting stewards of the very finest tasting highest quality coffee beans. With a hint of the volcanic soil, they dwarf the better known brands, compromised long since by open fields, and modern implements of production.

Diane Hughes, the founder buys, sometimes with great difficulty directly from these small family farmers, speaking a tribal dialect, neither Spanish nor English, colorful descendents of the Mayans. The women with long colored skirts, identifying their village, and carry quintals of pergamino effortlessly balanced on their heads.

Earthfriendly coffee sells itself through social and justice conscious non profits as a fund-raiser to the advantage of the consumer the non profit and the mountain farmers. Without this initiative the poor mountain families are exploited by revolution, illicit cash crops and the unscrupulous coyotes. Prestigious resellers include churches, colleges, a number of sports teams and Catholic Relief Services. Earthfriendly is worth a visit.

The higher up the mountainside, the sweeter grow the cherries! but everybody knows that. The trouble is the big coffee roasters buy from the coyotes or estates down in the vally where modern mechanized agriculture and productivity techniques produce greater yield and easier access. Juan Valdez now drives a BMW.