Two coffee growers’ organizations (‘Asociacion Comunitaria Integral Productiva’ and ‘Cooperativa Integral Frutos de Mi Tierra), located in Jalapa and San Carlos Alzatate, attended a coffee roasting and tasting workshop on April 2018, organized at AGEXPORT’s Coffee Lab.

Thanks to a key Alliance between AGEXPORT’s Development Division and Differentiated Coffees commission, the institution offered a workshop designed to widen the knowledge and training of coffee growers located at the Dry Corridor, focusing on proving the attendees with tools to assess the quality of coffee grains, analyze its transformation yields and examine different characteristics of coffee cups.

The workshop was developed by coffee experts which trained and gave demonstrations of coffee roasting and tasting to 15 local coffee growers. This, at AGEXPORT’s recently launched Coffee Lab. The coffee used during the workshop came directly from the Eastern department of Jalapa.

Following this experience, coffee growers developed a better comprehension on the coffee transformation processes as well as its industrialization, key to improve their production techniques and post-harvest procedures, which ultimately influence the quality and flavor of the coffee offered to their consumers.

The coffee growers that attended the workshop learned and used different machineries commonly found on coffee roasting and tasting laboratories. Additionally, they also learned how to assess the quality of their product according to different requirements made by international clients, remarked Mr. Sergio Mazariegos, coordinator of AGEXPORT’s Differentiated Coffees commission.

The event was possible thanks to the support from the Sustainable Forests Management and Global Environmental Benefits Project of the Environment and Natural Resources Ministry (MARN, for its acronym in Spanish), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Global Environmental Facility’s Small Grants Program.