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| Inaugural ceremony with leaders from the sponsoring coffee organizations. |
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“What we do is an art,”
explains coffee grower Don Manuel Eduardo Juárez. He talks about ways to add
value to each stage of production by paying greater attention to quality. By
picking coffee berries when they are ripe, farmers can receive greater revenue
for two reasons. For one, berries weigh more when ripe so farmers can sell more
kilograms of coffee. Second, the ripened berries have more time for flavors to
develop, which makes for higher quality coffee. There is an economic incentive
for coffee growers to pay more attention quality. This was one of the many
take-home lessons from el Día del Cafeticultor, a daylong workshop on
sustainable coffee management.
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| Workshop on coffee quality by CAFECOL |
Nearly three hundred coffee
growers from surrounding regions of Veracruz attended the workshop. The event
was hosted by the national institute of research on forestry, agriculture, and
livestock (INIFAP) and co-sponsored by an alphabet soup of academic and
governmental institutions: INECOL, CAFECOL, AMECAFE, UV, SAGARPA, and CONACYT. Workshops
spanned topics from soil composition and pest control to diversification of
fruit trees on coffee plantations. There were also art classes for kids, a
photography exhibit, pastry demo, and documentary screening. Aside from the jitter of one too many
coffee samples, I walked away from the event with a better sense of the significance
of coffee in terms of economics and culture for the 90,000 families who depend
on its production in Veracruz.
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| A coffee grower smells the difference of high quality coffee beans. |
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