Honduras Trip 2020

By Andy Gaertner

Andy, Sue, and Mary visited Las Moras, where we went first to Maximo and then to Benito Perez’s farm. Their farm seemed to be flush with production. There were three drying sheds under construction and lots of coffee drying in the open air on the tables that would soon be covered. We spoke with Maximo about coffee rust. He explained that he and his brother’s farms were growing “Paca” coffee before the rust came. They have been forced to cut down and replace almost all of the Paca. The new varieties of IHCAFE90 and Catimor still get the rust, but with care and extra fertilizer, they don’t die completely. They can bounce back. We saw some of the Paca plants that were still there, and sure enough they looked pretty bad with coffee rust. After visiting with Maximo (Mancho), Benito, and Mancho’s two children (Yesica and Maxito), we went a little down the mountain to see Patrocinio Sanchez’ farm. He had a very mean looking dog tied up, but a big smile on his face. Patrocinio (Chino) showed us a near complete drying shed and some very healthy coffee plants. We did not meet his family. We learned that the drying sheds were something that the cooperative received through a partnership with an organization called “PRO-NE” which partnered with their certifying agency “MAYACER” to help build up the co-op capacity. PRO-NE has been helping COFEACOMA (our co-op) pay for certification costs and drying sheds in the hopes that soon they will have extra capacity of quality coffee to sell to them. 

Photos from the First full day (Las Moras): Open the pdf of the full blog here