Relationships renewed and begun

Written by Sally Wevers, who led a team from Calvary Church in Holland, Michigan, on a visit to La Unión from Feb. 11 to 18. 

An eight person team recently returned from La Unión, Honduras. Despite different ages, backgrounds, experiences, and viewpoints, the group bonded extremely well. The Unión MicroFinanza staff did an amazing job setting up the schedule, as we were able to spend time with farmers, families, students at Abundant Life school, and individuals in La Unión.

The trip was unique in that it took place during coffee harvest, and we were able to receive and process Marlon Carcamo's (Calvary's coffee provider) coffee cherries. We picked coffee, unloaded 150-pound bags of fresh coffee cherries, processed them through the beneficio, hand sorted, stirred beans in the solar dryer, smelled, tested and tasted coffee.

We had times of reflection, devotions, and debriefing, sharing, and challenge. In order to share so many thoughts from the team, we are listing some observations, impacts, and responses. We hope you enjoy reading about what we have learned.

Observations:
- There is extreme poverty next to spectacular beauty, and the two extremes painfully clash.
- Calvary's coffee farmer, Marlon Carcamo, was thrilled and honored to have North Americans pick in his field and have lunch in his home with his family. But, the honor was ours.
- Our hearts hurt for the difficult physical labor and efforts placed on our farmer friends, so painfully affected by a leaf rust fungus that was no fault of their own. The fungus destroyed major portions of the coffee fields for many farmers. Knowing the families, having faces with names, brings authentic sadness and concern to the team. Our prayers will now be more intentional for them.
-"It is unfair that they work so hard and their provision for food is wiped out. The unfairness makes me mad!  I don't think I will complain when I get my Saturday chore list anymore," shared by the youngest member of our team.
- Physical provisions for families have been negatively affected, but there is more. Education for many has been taken away. We spent limited time in Nueva Paz -- this is where a team helped to build water collection systems called pilas two years ago. Eight children could be named from this one small community who had to quit their local school for lack of $15 per student for the semester!

Impacts:
- We are committed to purchasing the Aldea Coffee at church, and sharing our experience with others. The choices we make at home do dramatically impact others.
- We are partnering with an amazing organization in La Unión. The Unión Microfinanza (UMF) staff is committed to change. One of the staff members shared this with us, "Coffee is the thing we do to partner with and provide change. It could have been tea, or something else. The driving passion we have is the people, not the product."
- The UMF staff has the wisdom and the education to teach and replicate supplies needed to create smaller scale beneficios for area farmers. This training continues to have ripple affects in the community. We are grateful for Calvary's partnership with this organization.
- The team was challenged to attain more responsible personal stewardship, to consider what "living with less" might look like, to realize a growing appreciation for UMF's tremendous commitment to La Unión, and we experienced a greater appreciation for the education offered at Abundant Life school. The spiritual maturity of high school students was a powerful witness to us.

Most, if not all of us, have been asked,"Why go on a mission trip?" This is a summary of our answers. It is not about how much work that could be accomplished, but rather it is about relationships renewed, and others begun. It is not about what we could teach them, but what they had to teach us. When we now know names with faces, people matter. What they do and need matters, and responding to needs brings Christ-centered joy. Mission trips motivate personally and communally. Step out of your comfort zone. Mission trips are addictive!

Photos: What’s new at the UMF beneficio

The first coffees of the 2014 harvest are in at the beneficio! As we discussed in a previous post, we made some changes to how we are running things at the beneficio this year. But we couldn’t do this without making some changes to the beneficio itself.

First, and most importantly, we turned our four large fermentation tanks into eight smaller tanks. This is important because it allows each farmer to have two small tanks, meaning they can bring coffee more continually:

Second, we are building another two solar dryers. One will be a large solar dryer, totaling four, so that each farmer has access to their own dryer. The other will be a smaller dryer that we designed in the off-season. This dryer will be used mainly for experimentation, and will also serve as a model to farmers who produce small amounts of coffee and cannot afford to build a larger solar dryer:

Third, we have our custom-built coffee cherry size sorting machine up and running. This machine will sort out under-ripe and over-ripe cherries that would otherwise lower the quality of the coffee:

Fourth, we have installed a biodigester. This biodigester will use anaerobic fermentation to treat coffee wastewater and coffee pulp, ensuring that we are not contaminating the environment around us. Additionally, it will produce methane gas that can be used to run our processing equipment. More on this in another post.

We have also made several smaller changes including a newly designed valve in our upper tanks that will facilitate coffee flow, lowering our processing water usage, and check boxes in our wastewater tubing to prevent blockages:

All of these changes will help UMF to better achieve our goals of quality, training, and sustainability at the beneficio.

A new approach at the UMF beneficio

We’re firing up the depulping machine at the UMF beneficio in La Unión, ready for the 2014 coffee harvest! This year will look a little different at the beneficio – let us tell you what’s new and what we hope to accomplish through the changes we’ve made.

Each year, we learn more about coffee processing and how to better achieve our goals of quality, training, and environmental sustainability. The 2013 harvest season saw successes in all three of these areas, but we want to improve on it by making changes for the 2014 harvest.

The biggest change we’ve made is that only four different farmers will process their coffee at the UMF beneficio this year. These farmers were pre-selected based on their participation in previous years at the beneficio and in our microloan program. The main idea for having only four farmers each year is to ensure that we are able to provide the best training experience possible, so that they will be able to replicate and continue processing high quality coffee on their own in future years.

The fermentation tanks get tiling after being split in half.

In addition, we (UMF) and the farmers will be better able to manage how much coffee is coming to the beneficio for processing, and when. Each of the four farmers will be assigned an entire solar dryer and two fermentation tanks (we modified our previous tanks to divide them in half and create eight tanks in total). Farmers will be in charge of managing this equipment, so they will know before they pick coffee if they have room at the UMF beneficio to process, ferment, and dry it. Through this experience, farmers will learn about managing the coffee processing at their own beneficios in the future.

By working in-depth with four farmers during this harvest, we will also be able to visit coffee farms on the day of picking and offer on-site advice on picking quality coffee. High quality picking is one of the areas that we have identified as having the greatest impact on final quality, so this will benefit the farmers (who will get a higher price for better quality) as well as consumers, who will get even better coffee at the end of the day.

Also, we’ll require farmers to spend at least 20 hours at the UMF beneficio to learn about the different processing stages that their coffee is going through, including receiving, fermentation and drying. This in-depth training is important to enable farmers to process their own coffee in the future. Since we also want to make sure that other farmers have the opportunity to receive this training in the future, we’re limiting the number of years that a farmer can process at the UMF beneficio.

All of these changes will continue to transform the beneficio into a stepping stone to farmers achieving their own coffee processing capabilities. Within the next few years, we are excited to see farmers graduate from the UMF beneficio and implement high quality, environmentally sustainable beneficios of their own. We will be posting updates throughout the harvest!

In coffee leaf rust experiment, a surprise discovery

We're just over three months into UMF’s experiment comparing chemical and organic treatments for coffee leaf rust. The experiment is going well, but full details on how the treatments are working will come later, as we are still analyzing the most recent sampling. Apart from the treatment results, we have observed something interesting and unexpected. We first saw it a little over a month ago, and we confirmed it with formal sampling this past week: branches that don’t have any leaves start to die, but branches with even one leaf remaining, stay alive.

In our analysis, we found that 91% of branches that have no leaves showed signs of dying (dieback): blackened ends and softening of the branch. However, only 16% of branches with a single leaf showed signs of dieback. And 0% of branches that had two or more leaves showed signs of dieback.

These results are interesting for two reasons. First, it suggests that keeping a single leaf on a branch will prevent most long-term damage that will affect future harvests. Having two leaves on a branch ensures that no long-term damage will occur to the branch.

For farmers dealing with leaf rust, this observation has important potential implications. Throughout the course of the harvest year, a coffee plant grows new leaves, although this growth is concentrated during the rainy season. Farmers may be able to prevent long-term damage to a plant simply by using proper preventative measures to protect new leaves, even when older leaves of a plant are highly infected by leaf rust.

Second, our observation suggests that the long-term effects of leaf rust are branch-based, rather than plant-based. If a branch losing all of its leaves had a negative effect on the rest of the plant, we would expect to see a larger number of branches that show dieback but still have leaves. This means that proper treatment of leaf rust on one branch will not necessarily prevent long-term damage to other branches on that same tree. But, conversely, damage to one branch will not necessarily cause damage to another branch.

Furthermore, it appears that the effects of leaf rust are not transferred between primary branches and the secondary branches that grow off of them. Even though they are part of the same branch, we are seeing that secondary branches can lose all of their leaves and start to die while the primary branch continues to be healthy, and vice versa.

These numbers are not yet conclusive, and further experiments will need to be run in the future to be certain that leaf loss is causing, not just associated, with the dying of branches. There is still much to be done in terms of understanding how to take these new results and convert them into practical leaf rust prevention advice to farmers. However, they are certainly suggestive that the last few leaves are vital to the survival of coffee plants. We will continue to keep you informed as the experiment progresses.

UMF's 2012-2013 Coffee Transparency Report

At UMF, we believe that transparency is better than any particular certification. For this reason, we are proud to present our second annual Transparency Report, detailing all pricing for the coffees that we purchased from farmers in the 2013 coffee harvest. This report details how much coffee we purchased, which farmers we purchased from, what prices we paid directly to these farmers, and how to compare these to numbers reported by Fair Trade or direct trade coffees that report FOB pricing.

Coffee farmer Rudy Carcamo on his field.

Farmers in La Unión were hit doubly during the 2013 harvest, with large losses resulting from coffee leaf rust and prices dipping to three year lows when farmers were ready to sell coffee. Although most coffee buyers, including Fair Trade Certified coffee, dropped prices with the falling market price, UMF made the decision to maintain prices from the 2012 harvest. If the coffee is as good this year as last, why would we lower the amount of money that we pay to purchase it? This year, our average green coffee purchase price was $2.54 (it was $2.48 in 2012) and our average parchment purchase price was $1.59 (it was $1.81 in 2012). Over the same time period, the coffee market price dropped 73%.

We encourage you to read this Transparency Report and ask questions. There are many companies and organizations around the world that claim to be helping farmers through the prices they pay for coffee, including ourselves. Without transparency, it is impossible for you, the consumer, to make informed decisions. Once you have read our transparency report, look for transparent information from other socially conscious coffee companies so that you can make an informed decision on what you buy for your morning cup.

How we pay farmers

UMF receives purchased coffee from farmers.

Among the numbers you will see below is the price that UMF paid for parchment coffee, or coffee with the shell still attached (this is how the vast majority of farmers sell their coffee). UMF and coffee farmers signed contracts in La Unión at the time of purchase, and these contracts show the total amount paid to a farmer for his or her coffee. The parchment coffee price is the amount of money paid directly to the farmer, divided by the amount of coffee sold to us, and it is the most transparent representation of what farmers received for their coffee.

To make comparison easier, we also translate this number into an amount paid to farmer per pound of green coffee as well as FOB pricing. FOB pricing is the most common number given by companies who report what they pay for coffee. However, this number includes shipping, preparation, and taxes that was NOT paid to the farmer. This number is different for every coffee but, as seen below, was an average of $0.41/lb green for the coffees that we purchased during this harvest.

To learn more about how this parchment price differs from prices quoted by Fair Trade and other exporters, read our 2011-2012 Transparency Report.

The Basics

Gilberto and Pedro sample coffee to be roasted and cupped.

UMF received and cupped 86 different coffees from 47 different farmers in the 2013 harvest. From these candidates, we selected and purchased the best 50 coffees from a total of 33 farmers. Eleven of these farmers participate in UMF’s microloan and training programs. In all, we purchased a total of 67,284 lb of parchment coffee from farmers. Next, we sent the coffee to a processing center in Honduras to remove the parchment and prepare it for exporting. This left us with 42,408 lb of green coffee, ready to be exported to the United States and sold. 

The smallest amount of coffee that we purchased from a farmer was 103 lb of parchment coffee, and the largest amount was 5,201 lb of coffee. The highest price that we paid was $1.78/lb parchment, and the lowest price paid was $1.38/lb parchment. As a comparison with Fair Trade Certified prices, the highest FOB price we paid was $3.72 and the lowest FOB price paid was $2.43. For reference, the Fair Trade Certified FOB coffee price this harvest was between $1.60 and $1.78 the past year.

The Numbers

Here is UMF’s 2012-2013 coffee transparency information:

A note for the blends: the price per pound green to farmer and the FOB price are estimates because the coffees are mixed prior to processing. However, the parchment price is exact for each farmer’s coffee in the blend. The bolded prices for the blends give the average for the entire blend, and the bolded number for total exported represents the weight of the entire blend.

Contracts

Below, we’ve posted a sample contract to show how we purchase coffee from farmers (we’ve removed from the sample the part of the contract that includes personal financial details). The main parts of the contract are explained here:

•  Código del Café (Coffee Code): A unique code assigned to each sample we receive.

•  Cantidad (Amount): The amount of parchment coffee we purchased in qq, or quintales. (One quintal is 100 lb.)

•  Oferta (Offer): The rate we offer for each carga of coffee. (One carga is 200 lb, and the price is listed in the Honduran currency: Lempira. 1 USD ~ 20 Lempira depending on daily exchange rate)

•  Precio Contrato (Contract Price): The total price paid to the farmer -- the amount of coffee purchased multiplied by the rate offered. (Oddly, the standard practice is to list the amount of coffee in quintales, or multiples of 100 lb, and to make the offer per carga, or 200 lb. It’s a confusing system, and we didn’t invent it. The contract price takes this difference into account.)

•  Firma (Signature): This contract was signed in UMF’s La Unión office by UMF Financial Officer Charles Heins.

For a glossary of terms in the transparency report, and to view last year's numbers, visit our 2011-2012 Transparency Report.

Experiment targets coffee leaf rust through prevention and treatment

Coffee Leaf Rust (CLR), caused by Hemileia Vastritix, is a fungus that attacks coffee plantations worldwide, leading to leaf loss, loss of harvest and, in severe cases, long-term damage to coffee plants. During the 2012-2013 growing and harvest season, this fungus caused massive economic losses to farmers throughout Latin America, with some farmers losing as much as 90 percent of their harvest.

In response to the continuing problem that farmers face in dealing with CLR, UMF is performing an experiment to evaluate different inorganic (chemical) fungicides as well as potential organic treatments, with the goal of finding organic treatments that can serve to control the rust and prevent future damage to the farmers of La Unión. Chemical fungicides are very expensive and, following the loss during last year’s harvest, many of the farmers in UMF’s program have been unable to purchase proper treatments. 

Additionally, these chemical fungicides have been shown to have harmful effects on the health of farmers that spray them, even more so since access to proper protective equipment is difficult for small-scale farmers. And finally, chemical fungicides have been shown damaging to the environment, wildlife, and water sources. The discovery of organic alternatives to chemical fungicides holds the potential to address all three of these issues.

Martir checks each leaf on a selected branch.

The way that we are running this experiment is relatively simple—select different areas of a farm, apply different treatments to each of those sections, and monitor results. We are working on the farm of long-time UMF client Amado Reyes for this experiment.

In the last week of August, we took initial samples of each area of Amado’s farm. These samples will serve as a baseline for the effects that chemical and organic treatments have on CLR. We then sprayed the first round of treatments on each area.

The chemical fungicides that we are using are copper, Silvacur, and Alto 10. These are the three most recommended fungicides currently available in the area.

The organic treatments that we are using are milk whey, sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), and madrifol.

Milk whey is widely available from dairy farmers in the area as a waste product from producing cheese. This means that farmers are able to attain it without cost. Whey has been shown to have effects as good as, or in some cases better than, chemical treatments when applied to powdery funguses in grape vineyards and cucumber farms. The powdery funguses that attack grapes and cucumbers are not coffee leaf rust, but they have similar structure. This leads us to believe that there is a high likelihood that whey will be able to control rust outbreaks in coffee.

Gilberto sprays copper on one section of plants.

Sodium bicarbonate, otherwise known as common baking soda, has proven capable of different levels of control of powdery funguses in crops such as roses and grape vineyards. We are hopeful that the same mechanisms control powdery funguses in other plants will prove effective when applying sodium bicarbonate to control coffee leaf rust.

Madrifol is a locally-made fermented mixture of ground leaves from Madreado trees and wood ash. Although there haven’t been any scientific studies showing whether madrifol is effective, it is used as an anti-fungal in different applications in Honduras. The added wood ash contains bicarbonates (similar to those in baking soda), other organic salts shown to be effective in controlling powdery funguses, and small amounts of copper. We are unsure of the expected outcome of this treatment, but this home-made remedy has long use in Honduras, and we are hopeful that it will be effective when applied to coffee.

We will continue spraying organic/inorganic treatments and monitoring the progression of CLR in each of the separate treatment areas over the coming months. We believe that this experiment is the most important way that UMF can support both farmers and the environment in La Unión as coffee leaf rust outbreaks continue in coming years. We will keep you updated on the progress as we go.

To view photos of our first data collection on the farm, visit our Facebook album here.

Conquering coffee leaf rust, one farm at a time

By Heather Farrell

The air cools as we pass through La Zona Alta – The High Zone – on our way to Pedro Mejia’s coffee farm. The Honduran village is appropriately named – we’re level with the clouds that still cling to the mountains across the valley, remnants of last night’s thunderstorm. My coworker, Pedro Hernández, guides the motorcycle carefully on the damp dirt roads. We’re meeting Mejia to walk his field with him and do a leaf analysis that will identify disease prevalence and nutrient deficiencies on his farm.

Pedro Mejia holds up a rust-affected leaf.

Mejia has worked with Unión MicroFinanza for years, participating in our microloan program and selling us his specialty-grade coffee. But Mejia’s past harvest, like so many in Central America, was affected by the outbreak of coffee leaf rust, known in Spanish as la roya. Now he wants advice on what to do about it.

Mejia knows about leaf rust: he has been to large, general trainings offered by engineers from coffee organizations in Honduras. But as for a specialist from any organization coming to his farm to show him what to do in practice? “Never,” Mejia says. His two fields are less than two acres each, and the larger organizations do not have the resources to visit small farms like these.

Unión MicroFinanza has begun individualized field trainings to meet this need. A majority of the farmers in this region own small lots; but each finca, or coffee farm, has different agricultural needs. Coffee leaf rust will not be brought under control through general trainings, or through educational materials offered at a price outside the budgets of most coffee farmers. Each farmer, no matter the size of their field, must know how to control and prevent the disease from spreading.

“Look, this is lempira – it’s resistant,” Mejia points to the rust-resistant coffee variety that’s full of leaves and easy to distinguish on an affected farm. Three-quarters of this finca is red catuaí, a variety known for its quality, but which is susceptible to leaf rust. Some of the plants are recovering from leaf rust and have a good number of leaves, some have only a few leaves hanging on, and some Mejia has already cut down because they were beyond recovery. Last harvest, only 50 percent of his red catuaí cherries ripened. The rest didn’t ripen because the plant didn’t have enough leaves to produce energy for ripening the fruit.

Mejia and Hernández conduct a leaf analysis of the farm.

Mejia plunges deeper into his field to show us more plants. I struggle to keep up, sliding on the loose earth, crashing through dead branches, and getting facefuls of spider webs and wet leaves. Hernández shows Mejia how to perform the leaf analysis – pick 100 leaves from different trees without looking at them. Then, they examine the sampling, and based on shape and color irregularities, determine what nutrients the plants lack and what diseases are present (leaf rust isn’t the only coffee plague: diseases like ojo de gallo can be just as damaging to leaves, and affect varieties resistant to rust.)

“We recommend you do the analysis each month. The purpose is to control roya through nutrition and vigilance, to see if it’s going down,” Hernández says.

After the analysis, we move down the road to Mejia’s second farm. Right away, we see the plants are dramatically different from those on his other field. These lush young trees are of the variety yellow catuaí. Already they are laden with green cherries. I haven’t seen branches of catuaí trees so full of coffee in a while. Seeing these beautiful young plants, I now understand why Mejia might consider stumping and replanting on his older field.

The trees on his other farm are 12 years old; they’re tall and already have most of their expected harvests behind them. Yes, it would be less time, work and money if they could recover from the leaf rust after a year. But the time and money put into fighting the disease and trying to re-grow leaves wouldn’t be worth it; it’d be better to wait the two years needed for a new plant to produce a harvest. And, as farmers are now fully aware, preventing a disease like leaf rust is much easier than fighting it off once it has settled in and done its damage.

I ask Hernández if leaf rust was so bad last harvest because it caught everyone off guard.

“Yes, the outbreak was a surprise, so there wasn’t a chance for prevention,” he says.

Mejia walks between rows of
red catuaí coffee plants.

With his yellow catuaí, Mejia is ahead of the leaf rust: he can make sure the young plants stay healthy, with all the nutrients they need to ripen their large harvest while fighting off any leaf rust attacks. If he sees the rust start to take hold, he can use preventative sprays before it damages the plants.

As for his older field, he will control the rust as well as he can and wait a year to see if the plants recuperate. Hernández recommends a prevention product based on the results of the leaf analysis (more than 50 percent of the sampled leaves showed rust), and calculates how much of it Mejia will need. He’ll be able to purchase the product with the help of a microloan from Unión MicroFinanza.

If the trees don’t recover, he will stump some trees and clear the rest to plant anew.

“But I want to replant with catuaí again. And maybe bourbon. They have good flavor and I don’t want to lose that,” Mejia says. This is exactly what Unión MicroFinanza hopes – that farmers will maintain diversity on their fields and keep coffee varieties such as catuaí and bourbon that result in more flavorful coffee. Through individualized trainings, farmers will receive the practical knowledge they need to overcome coffee leaf rust and produce a consistent harvest of high-quality coffee.

Notes from a coffee field training

By Kayli Horne

Our altitude is around 1,550 meters as we pull up to Rigoberto Paz’s finca. I have made the ascent on the back of Pedro’s moto, passing waterfalls, clouds, and two aldeas, Chimizal and El Sitio, along the way.

Rigoberto prunes a coffee tree.

Gilberto pulls out his phone to call Rigo to let him know we’ve arrived, but he laughs because we can hear his phone ringing in the distance. We make our way through the rows of coffee trees, guided by Rigo’s whistles, and find him, machete in hand, among a section of newly planted coffee trees.

Rigo tells me he has owned his farm for fifteen years and has sold his coffee to Unión MicroFinanza the last three years. Patrick, UMF’s president, had told me that Rigo’s coffee last season was especially delicious—in each cup there were chocolatey-mango flavors. I feel privileged to be here at his finca, where the warm, liquid deliciousness I enjoy in the morning originates.

We start with pruning the farm. Gilberto tells me that although it seems counterintuitive, a coffee tree should not have as many hijos, or branches, as naturally grow; optimally, each tree should only have 2-3 hijos growing from the trunk. This is so that the leaves can get sufficient air and sunlight. If there are too many branches, the tree will actually produce less coffee, because there isn’t enough energy being allocated to cherry production and nourishment.

The section of the finca we’re working on is only two months old, and already there are up to seven hijos branching off. “Qué lastima,” or “what a pity,” Gilberto laments, as he cuts off five hijos from the tree. His face cringes, as if he can feel the plant’s pain. His love for coffee farming runs deep; he tells me he learned much of his knowledge about diseases and caring for the farm from his father. 

Light sprinkles of rain come and go throughout the morning. Pedro and Gilberto help Rigo prune about six rows of coffee trees. I ask Rigo how much time it will take him to do the whole farm. He says it will take him a week to prune half of a manzana (that’s a little less than an acre). 

Pruning, however, is just one of the basic practices that UMF covers in its trainings. Next, Gilberto and Pedro teach Rigo how to identify diseases and nutritional deficiencies. We assess the health of the farm by analyzing 100 leaves chosen without bias from different trees and parts of the farm. Pedro holds up each leaf one by one and identifies if there is a deficiency or disease. Rigo records the results in the UMF libreta, or notebook, in which he can continue to document leaf analyses every month.

Rigoberto and Gilberto record results from the leaf analysis.

As we’re finishing up the 100-leaf sample, the sun comes out, which if you were wondering, is pretty intense in the tropics at 1,550 meters. Ten of the leaves have roya, or coffee leaf rust, 20 have ojo de gallo, or chicken’s eye, and a handful have nutritional deficiencies. The verdict? Rigo makes plans to fumigate later this week with cobra verde to limit the spread of the diseases, so the leaves can continue to grow, making healthy plants and, in turn, more delicious coffee during this year’s harvest.

With personalized training sessions, not large-scale demonstrations or brochures, UMF makes the connection between current agricultural research and small-scale rural farmers. This is a relationship-based organization that is here for the long haul, not just to buy coffees during harvest or distribute microloans. The innovative farming techniques aim at improving the quality and increasing the quantity of the coffee, so the farmer can make more money during the harvest. This works toward our ultimate goal: enriching the lives of the people of the communities in which we work.

Harvest is over, but the learning continues

Coffee has been off the trees for barely a month and already we are thinking about next harvest. May and June is the time to prepare coffee fields, including pruning, stumping, fertilizing, and targeting plant diseases such as coffee leaf rust. Due to the leaf rust plague, it is particularly critical this year that coffee plants receive sufficient nutrition to fight the fungus and produce new leaves and fruit.

UMF field officers attend a Honduran

coffee institute training.

UMF's field officers have been receiving and giving trainings about coffee field recovery from leaf rust. They identify plants that have died – these must be taken out and new ones planted. If a plant is still living (even if it has no leaves), a farmer can prune or stump the plant and hope for new growth. If the plant has multiple trunks and some leaves remaining, cutting down just one of the trunks allows the plant to continue producing leaves and fruit at the same time as new growth occurs.

Gilberto shows a farmer how to cut back a 

coffee plant that was affected by leaf rust.

Martir, Pedro and Gilberto have been visiting coffee fields in La Unión to analyze plants and recommend what actions the farmer should take. The appropriate action is important, since each of these repairs comes with a different expectation as to when the tree will next bear fruit, and therefore become profitable for the farmer.

Even after coffee harvest and processing, UMF's beneficio continues to serve as a training center for farmers and visitors. Recently, third-grade students from La Unión's bilingual Abundant Life school spent a morning at the beneficio. They learned about how we process and dry coffee, how we collect and reuse water, and how we treat coffee wastewater and pulp (using microorganisms and red worms) to turn it from a pollutant into organic fertilizer. Below are photos from their visit:

Martir shows the students how the 

coffee de-pulping machine works.

The students see how microorganisms grow.

Gilberto shows the students how red worms break down coffee pulp into soil.

The students learn how to treat coffee wastewater to keep it from polluting waterways.

Coffee leaf rust damages fields, production

In Honduras, simply mentioning roya is sure to spark conversation. Coffee leaf rust (roya in Spanish) has caused high stress this year for coffee farmers, exporters, governments, and agricultural engineers. Losses in coffee exports for Honduras were estimated to be $200 million and in La Unión, some farmers we surveyed have seen a decrease in their harvest by as much as 80 percent over last year.

While much research remains to be done, knowledge about the disease and prevention techniques is growing. The following shares some basic information about coffee leaf rust, its effect on coffee plants and production, and ways to try to combat the disease.

The yellow spots on this leaf are coffee leaf rust.

Coffee leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix) is a fungus that affects the leaves of coffee plants, and consequently the production of coffee fruit. It appears as yellowish-brown spots on the leaves, and pulls energy and nutrients from the plant. Eventually, the leaves fall from the plant, which can no longer produce the nutrition needed to develop the fruit. The coffee cherries from a severely-affected plant eventually fall to the ground, often before fully ripening.

While many farmers have taken steps to control the disease, they can never completely eradicate it. Spores spread from farm to farm in a variety of ways - wind, animals, and people - making prevention difficult once a neighboring field has been afflicted. One way to prevent the airborne spread of the fungus is to surround a field with large-foliage plants to block the spores from reaching the coffee trees. Agricultural engineers also encourage farmers to fertilize and care for coffee plants, because healthy trees are better able to fight the disease than those missing vital nutrients. Preventative formulas can be applied to plants during early stages of the attack. If coffee leaf rust is not immediately treated, farmers may choose to fumigate a field with curative sprays, though these sprays are highly toxic when compared to the preventative formulas. Trees that have already been highly damaged by leaf rust can be cut down to the roots, and the new shoots cared for to try to prevent the fungus from returning.

New leaves grow on a plant that was stumped.

However, even if farmers are able to eradicate or control leaf rust on their fields, the trees will take at least a year to regrow leaves before they put energy into producing fruit. If a farmer decides to plant new trees or cut old trees to the roots, they will have to wait at least two years for the young trees to bear fruit.

Many farmers whose fields have been hit hard by leaf rust this year say they plan to plant new trees of the varietals Lempira and IHCAFE 90 (noventa) because these are still resistant to the disease. However, according to engineers, planting only these varietals comes with its own set of problems. First, there is no guarantee that the disease won’t mutate and begin affecting them as well; secondly, reducing the variety of plants also reduces variety in coffee flavors and could impact the quality of Honduran coffee; third, these varietals are not resistant to all diseases, and can still be subject to infirmities such as ojo de gallo or the insect broca (coffee berry borer). Lastly, planting only one or two varietals encourages the spread of diseases that affect those types.

Why is leaf rust so bad this year versus past years? Some scientists cite climate change as one factor in the increase of the disease, though others minimize its impact (this New York Times blog post gives more information on leaf rust and theories on the causes.) Certain temperature and rainfall conditions can cause the disease to thrive one year, while remaining in the background during other years. Because not much is known yet about the factors that promote growth of the fungus, it is difficult to suggest strategies to eradicate it, though farmers have found various techniques that help control the plague. Engineers and farmers say that healthy coffee plants (that have sufficient nutrients from rich soil) are better able to combat fungus attacks, as are plants that don’t produce as much coffee (plants that produce many cherries don’t have energy left to fight off the fungus).

Some coffee is still able to ripen on trees with leaf rust.

Along with other Central American countries, Honduras has declared an agricultural state of emergency because of coffee leaf rust. Honduran news organizations reported in January that 130 – 150 million lbs of coffee have already been lost from an estimated 100,000 manzanas (about 172,700 acres) of affected farms. Because of its two resistant varieties, Honduras’ exports are not expected to drop as dramatically as those of neighboring countries. However, Honduras’ economic status as one of the poorest countries in Central America means it will have fewer resources to dedicate to research and support for farmers. At Unión MicroFinanza, we are working with farmers and coffee organizations to learn more about the disease, how to prevent and fight it, and how to increase a quality coffee harvest on individual farms.

UMF’s Gilberto Barrientos, who has been attending trainings and learning about the disease, gives suggestions to farmers based on the state of their farm: for affected fields younger than 15 years, the farmer should wait for new leaves to grow on the plants and use prevention techniques to try to keep the leaf rust from returning. This would include fertilizing the plants to help them recuperate. If the number of rust-affected leaves exceeds 5-10 per plant, he recommends beginning preventative measures. For farms that are older than 15 years or that haven’t been managed in a way that cultivates healthy plants, he recommends cutting down the trees and replanting.

Honduras has two varietals that are not yet
affected by the coffee leaf rust.

These coffee trees have been damaged by leaf rust,
and they have lost most of their leaves.

Beneficio processes first coffee of 2012-2013 harvest

A chilly rain fell on La Unión yesterday afternoon as we gathered under the newly-built beneficio roof, wearing sweaters and raincoats and jumping up and down, partly to stay warm and partly out of excitement. We looked up in anticipation at every truck that passed: we were waiting for Alfredo Ponce to arrive with this year's first coffee for processing at the beneficio.

Everything was in place, and daylight was beginning to slip away. Then, at 5:30, a truck carrying coffee came up the new road to the beneficio. Alfredo jumped out of the truck and greeted us with a smile. We unloaded the bags and found them full of gorgeous, ripe coffee. It was time for the first run of our new sorting equipment, system for moving coffee, and fermentation tanks.

An hour an a half later, we finished processing. Alfredo, who processed coffee at our beneficio last year as well, stayed to see the new sorting mechanisms and other changes we'd made for this year. Despite being tired and wet after processing, we were very happy that the new density and size-sorting mechanisms worked beautifully and that coffee flowed through the system much better than last year. We still have small changes to make, but we are excited to have started processing coffee and we are looking forward to the next few months!

Here are a few pictures from the afternoon:

Alfredo Ponce (in orange) helps unload coffee at the beneficio.

The coffee, mostly of the variety IHCAFE 90, waits to move to the de-pulping machine after the floating cherries were skimmed off and the water drained.

We removed floating coffee and sent it to another tank to be collected separately. 

Alfredo brought us 25 gallons (about 750 lbs.) of coffee cherries from his farm, which is at an altitude of about 1,475 meters.

Alfredo watches his coffee go through the de-pulping and size-sorting machine.

A locally-made sorting machine separates de-pulped coffee from damaged coffee.

Cooking with coffee

Celebrate Thanksgiving this year with a new recipe or two -- that involve coffee. Coffee enriches the taste of many foods, not only desserts. Below are a few recipe ideas to get you started; you can share your own favorite recipes in the comments, or let us know how these turned out for you. We recommend using some freshly roasted Honduran coffee, which also serves as a perfect follow-up to post-turkey-coma. You can support farmers in La Unión by purchasing coffee here, where you can find our beneficio blend, and coming soon, our new honey processed coffee.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Baked beans, flavored with coffee, molasses and brandy.

Add espresso to traditional pumpkin pie.

Serve turkey with a coffee barbecue sauce.

For a different meat, try lamb in coffee sauce.

Enhance beef stew with coffee.

It’s never too cold for coffee ice cream.

Need more ideas? This website has 14 coffee-based recipes for you to try. What is your favorite coffee recipe?