Producers: Clementino Ramirez
Location: Selguapa, Comayagua, Honduras
Farm: La Fortuna (2.5 ha)
Processing: Anaerobic washed
Cultivar: Typica
Wholebean coffee
Fresh apple juice, honey, vivid
Processing details: Cherries are picked daily by a team of 4 pickers, floated to remove defects, and then stored in sealed plastic bags where they undergo low oxygen fermentation under shade for 48 hours. The cherries are then depulped and placed back into bags where they ferment for an additional 48 hours. The seeds are then washed and moved to raised drying beds in full sun for four days where they are dried until the moisture is reduced enough to move them down to Jesus de Otoro at the central drying station of the Ramirez / Galeas family. The parchment is placed again on raised beds under shade and is slowly dried for 25 - 30 days before being stored in hermetically sealed bags to preserve their quality.
Farmgate price: 7500 Lempira/quintal green coffee.
Local farmgate price (April 2024): 3500 Lempira/quintal green coffee
FOB Price: $3.46USD/lb
Semilla Coffee:
Clementino was one of the first growers we had the pleasure of connecting with at the beginning of Semilla, back in 2019. He and his brothers are one of the first, if not the very first, to begin growing coffee in the small hamlet of Selguapa, high up in the Montecillos mountain range. Though their family’s history in coffee growing reaches back to the 1980s, it was only in 2019 when we met Clementino and his family that they were making their steps towards entering a differentiated market for their coffees.
This connection to an external specialty market came via Jesus Galeas, Clementino’s son-in-law, who was at the time working with a company that was seeking coffees from often overlooked areas of the country that possessed the characteristics to produce high quality coffees. Jesus’ role was to travel to these remote areas and use his experience as an IHCAFE field technician to train them in best practices around farm maintenance, cherry collection, fermentation, and drying.
One of his first stops was to connect his new extended family to the project as his sister was assisting her husband and Clementino’s son, Milton, at their farm in Selguapa. Set at 1700masl, and growing primarily heirloom varieties like Bourbon and Typica, Jesus was certain the coffees held incredible potential if processed well and he was correct. The traditional mode of sale in this area has been (and continues to be for the vast majority) an intermediary model. Producers will sell their coffee in cherry, or as pre-secado, meaning it is picked, de-pulped and then dried for 3 - 4 days before being sold to an intermediary. Prices for coffees sold in this system are obviously terrible, and keep growers in a constant state of poverty.
Given the rampant corruption in Honduras, it’s also common for producers to offer their coffees on the promise of payment and never receive a cent. Even in a good year, such as 2024, members of these and neighbouring communities in the Montecillos mountain range reported a farmgate price of around $0.85USD/lb for parchment coffees, not including their costs to deliver the coffee to the buying point.
This mode of sale placed extreme stress on Clementino and his family. Shortly after we met Clementino, both he and his son migrated to the United States out of a necessity to pay back debts they had incurred on the farm after years of selling at bottom-barrel prices. Sadly, even in the year they sold via the company Jesus previously worked for, only the best lots were sold at a differentiated price and the remainder of their coffee had to be sold on the conventional market for these same low prices.
Clementino lived through some harrowing experiences in his journey North, including kidnapping and extortion, before arriving in Seattle where he worked for close to five years. Well into his sixties, he worked days as a labourer and nights in a kitchen, sending back whatever he earned to Honduras until he finally was able to pay back his debts and even make enough to purchase a new plot of land which the family began cultivating with coffee last year.
While we have worked with Clementino and Jesus since 2019, it was only last year that we were able to purchase the extended family’s entire production, which we also achieved this year as well.
Clementino returned to Honduras in early 2024 to be alongside his family and worked on the farm all season long, mainly due to the incredible labour shortages that are heavily affecting Honduras, especially in high-altitude, remote areas. In addition to this, he served as a conduit to many neighbouring communities like those of Toriles, Buena Vista, and Cantolal, as his reputation in the area is such that he was able to serve as an ambassador for us as we seek out more peripheral growers in these areas that have been overlooked or taken advantage of. With his help, we were able to see our new project Sueños de Semilla blossom to include around 25 local smallholders who have never exported their coffee previously.
The hope with Semilla’s work in all of these communities is that we operate on a baseline of prices that are not only sustainable but highly profitable, such that these coffee growers see their investment in coffee quality as a viable and desirable way to make a living. Asalways, all of our pricing is decided in open conversation with the growers we work with - seeking to arrive at a consensus decision as opposed to offering a top-down price. Similarly, we set fixed prices across the community as we recognize that the effort risk and commitment taken to process coffee as a microlot is the same, regardless of whether it’s an 86 or an 88. - Semilla Coffee