Rosalba Cifuentes Tovia, Founder of Mayan Harvest, is a determined, forward-thinking entrepreneur and has always put forward her best efforts in showcasing the delicious coffee that her hometown community has to offer. Since exporting her first shipping container of coffee in 2016, she’s since expanded to exporting nearly 10 containers in 2021. But uncertainties in global shipping, alongside higher prices of coffee in parchment has made purchasing in volume difficult, and is the main reason for reduced numbers of containers being shipped this year.
Some members of the El Progreso chapter of the Women’s Group
Despite the challenges, Mayan Harvest continues to move forward. The Bella Vista Women’s Group now has over 100 members from 12 different towns within the Bella Vista Municipality. Rosalba started the Women’s Group a few years into her first export after noticing that, despite the heavy workload of cooking, cleaning, caring for children and managing their farms, women-produced coffees were cleaner and better selected. To recognize them for their hard work, she separated the women-grown coffees from the community lot and paid them higher prices to match the better quality.
Farmers in Bella Vista sell their coffees to Mayan Harvest in parchment. This layer protects the bean from environmental conditions. Coffees are typically stored in parchment right before being milled and sent for export.
Mayan Harvest inspects every bag of coffee that farmers bring to them. Head Green Buyer Froilan Roblero, left, places a small sample into a mini dry mill to remove the parchment.
Once the parchment is removed, the green beans are inspected for defects. If a bag is rejected, Mayan Harvest will provide feedback to the farmers and let them know that they will purchase the coffee if it is better sorted.
In order to be a part of the Women’s Group, each member must have the title of the family farm under their name. The group is broken up into chapters based on region, and each chapter votes for a leader of the group. The chapters meet on a monthly basis to discuss best practices in farm management and other projects they can do for additional income. There are 22 women in the Progreso chapter, all of which seem to be the most dedicated to the group. They attend nearly all of the meetings and put their personal time into the group projects. As a sign of appreciation for the women’s participation, Mayan Harvest has purchased 22 electric corn mills and approximately 100 pounds of corn for each member. The mills were specifically fabricated for this project.
The corn mills in production
A finished corn mill
As Mayan Harvest continues to look for ways to give back to the community, gifting corn mills to women farmers to help them feed their families is a great starting point. One of the reasons Mayan Harvest was finally able to put this into action was their ability to sell directly to coffee roasters. Rather than working with an importer, who takes a cut from sales in order to compensate their work for managing logistics and financing, Mayan Harvest takes on the extra responsibility. It’s worth noting that while direct trade is a model that many coffee companies want to fully transition to, it’s difficult to achieve unless the company has enough purchasing power to do so. Oftentimes, importing companies are characterized as awful middlemen who pay a small price for green coffee and upsell to roasters. While we’ve certainly heard of stories, we know this isn’t the full truth. Importing companies can help producers and exporters at origin with financing, logistics, and also help them find coffee buyers. We’ve been able to purchase coffees from Mayan Harvest through Royal Coffee Importers based in Oakland–one of our importing partners and the organizers of both Bella Vista origin trips we’ve participated in. This year, we purchased the Women’s Group coffee through Royal, and have intentions of purchasing the Bella Vista community lot directly through Mayan Harvest once the coffee arrives in the US.
As we wait for the community lot to arrive, we’re excited to offer you this fresh arrival from the Bella Vista’s Women’s Group. It has notes of cara cara orange, dried pineapple, and piloncillo, proving to be as citrusy sweet as it has been every year that we’ve featured it on our menu.
