By Corazon Padilla, Director of Quality Control & Corey Turner, Director of Coffee Production
Rosalba, Corazon & Corey at Florismelda’s farm
At Andytown, we don’t always have the opportunity to visit all of the producers we buy coffee from, but we make our biggest effort to do so when we work with the same producers year after year. Our relationship with Rosalba Cifuentes Tovia of Mayan Harvest started three years ago, when she stopped by the Roastery to give us a coffee sample from her hometown of Bella Vista, Mexico. Since then, we have been able to increase our purchases each year, and each year, not only does Rosalba export more coffee, but the quality of her coffee continues to improve.
We came home from this trip to COVID-19 being declared a global pandemic. The next week, San Francisco issued a Shelter-in-Place order, and we moved to adapt our business to keep our team safe and stay afloat. It feels like so much time has passed since we were in Bella Vista, and our minds have truly been somewhere else with pivoting our work and home life to meet this crisis and figure out how to weather the storm and stay healthy. At times when we sat down to write this, it felt false to celebrate travel, a new coffee on the menu, or anything really. But revisiting this amazing time of exchanging knowledge and investing in this partnership has reminded us that in this time it’s more important than ever to think about why we travel, why we invest in making our processes more efficient and building real relationships with our partners, and how our purchasing impacts different levels of the supply stream even as small roasters.
Returning to Origin
Bella Vista has been growing coffee for many years, but farmers have historically been taken advantage of by predatory “Coyote” middlemen. These middlemen are sometimes individuals, and sometimes large importers with the resources to come straight to the individual farmers, prepared to buy their coffee on the spot. The larger middlemen will stab through each bag of green coffee, take a sample to evaluate (and keep it), then offer the farmer a price that subtracts the weight of the samples as well as a travel fee. Mayan Harvest was the first to offer farmers higher prices for their hard work. At first, the townspeople were skeptical of Rosalba’s vision, but when they saw that she was able to sell all of their coffee, they began to change their mindset. Now the farmers of Bella Vista are faced with a choice that largely depends on their own QC process--they can accept the lower offer from a buyer who comes to them, saving them the cost/risk of travel, or they can travel a bit further to Mayan Harvest and potentially get a higher price for their coffee if they’re able to meet their quality standards.
As a coffee roaster, it’s important for us to learn about how coffee is produced and prepared for export, but it’s also important for us to meet the people who produce the coffee we consume and thank them for their hard work. Corazon first visited Bella Vista in 2019 with our partners at Royal Coffee Importers and two other fellow coffee roasters. During that initial visit, she visited several farms and learned about farm management, drying, sorting, and dry processing. Farmers learned about the factors we consider when buying coffee.
Our first visit to Bella Vista, 2019. Pictured: Rosi of Royal Coffee Importers, Zenobi of Gold Rush Coffee, Rosalba, Alicia of Red Bay Coffee, and Corazon. Photo by Evan Gilman
Rosalba has only put Bella Vista on the map with persistence and thinking outside the box, being told “no” at every step and finding a way around it. She first got her coffee to the U.S. via banana boats, after being told "no" at least a dozen times because there were supposedly no shipping containers available. She finally suggested that they just turn the refrigeration off and use the banana boats that were sitting empty! In 2019, Rosalba exported four containers of coffee, and she was determined to double that number in 2020. While we had no doubt that Mayan Harvest would be capable of reaching their goal, we wondered how they would do it, so we decided to go back to Bella Vista during this year’s harvest.
Corey, our Director of Coffee Production, went on this trip to learn about the logistics of increasing volume while maintaining quality, and Corazon returned for a second time to see what new processes were being developed to ensure quality. The people of Bella Vista are used to hosting one-time visitors, and by returning, we were able to show the farmers and Mayan Harvest our serious investment in their community and commitment to continue working with them.
Responsibility as Guests
As coffee buyers from the consumers’ end, there is a lot of responsibility involved when visiting a coffee origin. This puts us in a position of privilege and power, and we were mindful of this throughout our entire trip. As coffee buyers, farmers will sometimes look to us for advice so that they can focus on what we want and maximize their production, but it would be irresponsible of us to tell a farmer how to manage their farm and influence how they cultivate their land. Even if we had knowledge about farming, recommending that they change their farming processes wouldn’t always result in us buying more of their coffee. That’s not a promise we want to make lightly. Those conversations should be between folks who have expertise growing and producing coffee, and decisions should always belong to those that live and work on their land.
This farmer doesn’t have a fermentation tank, so he’s showing Corey how to wash coffee by hand to remove the pectin layer or mucilage. Coffees that float to the top are removed and dried separately. These separated coffees are either sold to the local market or are used for instant coffee.
The people of Bella Vista are very warm and welcoming, and as hosts, they wanted to show us the best they could offer. We met with a lot of farmers and their families, dined in their homes, and walked through their farms. Some farm visits were a lot more strenuous than we anticipated, but we put on our best faces, secured our shoelaces, and committed to each trek. For many farmers, this was the first time they were hosting foreign guests, and they were excited to show us around. One such memorable farm visit included a steep, 30-minute hike up the mountain to Edilma’s farm. What was a sweaty, intense hike for us was a normal, daily walk for Edilma, and she knew this very well--we could see why she was insistent that we see it, though it didn’t turn out to be as short and easy as she promised for those of us who are less used to making the trip! Her son caught up to us at the farm just minutes after we reached the top, breathing normally and in good spirits while carrying plastic cups and two large bottles of ice cold Coca-Cola. It was the drink we never thought we needed until taking a sip, and we were all so grateful for their thoughtfulness.
Edilma showing us her farm
Corey feeling chipper with a Coke in hand at Edilma’s farm
Stay tuned for more reflections on our visit with Mayan Harvest in Bella Vista, Mexico!
