Guatemala

Throughout the 1990s, the Catholic Diocese of Quetzaltenango maintained an active program offering technical and organizational support to small-scale coffee farmers in western Guatemala, to help with poverty alleviation and economic development. However, despite this support, farmers still lacked the means to bring their product to market, and had to resort to selling to middlemen, “coyotes,” who cut them out of the greater market. To gain direct access to international buyers, the Asociación de Pequeños Productores de Café Manos Campesinas was conceived in 1996. Organized as a secondary level organization, the cooperative developed direct export channels for a founding group of 6 farmer associations. Today, Manos Campesinas is comprised of 13 cooperative groups across the departments of San Marcos, Quetzaltenango, Sololá and Chimaltenango, representing over 1,200 farming families. 

Manos Campesinas is fiercely independent and proud of its self-sustaining and financially responsible business model. They actively seek to avoid the need for external support from international governments and NGOs, which can often simply lead to more north-south dependency. Their strategic values include a commitment to social responsibility, quality, sustainability, gender equality, and environmental protection. 

APECAFORM (the Maya-Mam Association of Smallholder Organic Coffee Farmers) was established in 1992, with aid from the Catholic diocese in Guatemala, as part of an initiative to support the development of local, small-scale coffee farmers. Today APECAFORM is comprised of some 400 members, spread over 17 communities. APECAFORM members are 100% small-scale farmers upholding their Mayan roots, including deep respect for the land and holistic and organic farming practices, and preserving traditional culture and language. The majority of their members speak Mam, one of more than 20 languages spoken in Guatemala.

The APECAFORM office is located in Pueblo Nuevo, the most centrally located of their communities. Pueblo Nuevo is a two-hour drive to the closest commercial center, the city of San Marcos, and on average, a 2.5-hour walk from the remaining communities. Five community centers have been established across the APECAFORM region, where coffee is collected for transport to warehouse or further processing, training courses are offered to members, and planning and feedback meetings with community representatives are held. Organic promoters from the communities work with their respective farmer groups to assure that best organic agricultural practices are being implemented, quality control measures are being utilized to guarantee best final product, and that the organizational and social agreements are being respected in the communities.

In 1996, the umbrella organization Manos Campesinas was formed to handle the logistics of contracts and exporting for APECAFORM and other producer organizations in the areas of San Marcos, Quetzaltenango and Retalhuleu y Sololá, and, in 1997, was certified in the International Fairtrade Organization registry. APECAFORM was the first organization to export fair trade organic coffee under their new export organization, Manos Campesinas.

Today, with the strategic credit partnership between Root Capital, APECAFORM and fair trade importers such as Cooperative Coffees, producers continue to increase their sales of organic, fair trade coffee into international, specialty coffee markets.

Other achievements include: the purchase of land and construction of a central warehouse in Malacatan; the creation of a community fund to help finance their system of organic technicians and coordinators; and the development of on-site demonstration and experimental plots – where farmers see and learn about best production practices and test new varietals in their own geographical and climatic context before launching into renovation plans promoted from a distant laboratory.

Future projects together with Manos Campesinas include the construction of a centralized wet processing plant in order to gain more control over the handling of the coffee and to maintain highest quality; and the development of a roasted coffee operation and a café in Quetzaltenango for direct sale to local population and the bustling tourist market, as a way of diversifying the income opportunities for their members.

In 2022, Higher Grounds began additionally purchasing coffee from the Chajulense cooperative. Chajulense exported its first bags of coffee at the end of the 1980’s and the beginning of the 90’s, expanding opportunities through Fair Trade and organic certification obtained in the mid 2000's. In 2006, our importer Cooperative Coffees purchased one of the first Asociación Chajulense containers of fair trade and organic coffee shipped to the US market.