These single producer beans come to us directly from the 5 hectare farm of Israel Ramirez in the high altitude community of San Miguel de Selguapa, Comayagua, Honduras.
As a young man, Israel began growing coffee in 1990, only about 5 years after his father Antonio began the earliest crops in Selguapa. At this time, the price for coffee was so low it didn’t offer a liveable wage, and so he and other community members held other jobs to make ends meet. In truth, coffee has almost never served to pay the bills for producers in Selguapa. From 1985 until 2018, this group would grow their coffee and sell it to local intermediaries in cherry, often carrying it down to the town of Comayagua on mule-back in order to do so. As Antonio explained, they had no idea what the true value of their coffee was and as such, sold it this way unaware there were other opportunities.
Currently, there are about 800 coffee producers in Selguapa but only
the ~25 members of Los Ramirez group have taken the initiative to process and sell their own coffee as specialty grade. The going price in Honduras this year was, as always, between 1650-1800L/quintal exportable green. The members of Los Ramirez group agains received 6000L in their sale to Semilla Coffee Importers and Advocacy, from whom we at Mighty Valley pre-order and purchase the beans.
Israel serves as a defacto leader of the Los Ramirez family of coffee producers, organizing and chairing community meetings and outlining many of the goals the group shares together. As part of their desire to see the community as a whole gain access to their growing specialty market base, this year the family invested further in twenty communal drying beds as well as a Penagos ecopulper which is shared by multiple members of the group. They’ve also created a group emergency fund which members must contribute to with one quintal’s earnings per season, and can be relied upon by all members as necessary.
For more information about Semilla’s work with Israel and the Los Ramirez producers, see: https://www.semillla.com/losramirez-honduras
