Guatemala: Infinite Possibilities

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By Bethany Haye

Guatemala is a small Central American country with unique topography and an international reputation for stellar mild-flavored, specialty coffees and distinct profiles from fruit and floral to chocolate with caramel.

The world imported coffee $10 billion worth of Guatemalan coffees in 2017, 2.7% of world coffee exports, with more than half of it going to the US. Coffee exports overall represented one-eighth of the country’s GDP.

It is also the coffee-producing country with arguably the poorest growers in the world. Yet, despite a historically embedded government-imposed, toxic economic model and overwhelming climate and roya challenges, Guatemala is the highest-ranked country in the world for percentage of its crop classified as high quality with 95% falling into that coveted category.

With just 108,890 sq km (67.7 sq mi) of land area (roughly the size of the US state of Ohio), Guatemala has more than 300 different micro-climates, the most in the world for a single country. The mountainous terrain covering about half of its land area is densely shaded, with ample rainfall and 37 volcanoes, three of them active, regularly adding rich mineral content to the soil. All this, plus a relentless government push in the mid-19th century to make coffee a major export, have made Guatemala a world-renown producer of unique and often high-priced specialty arabicas. Of its 22 regions, 20 produce coffee. That’s 270,000 hectares, minuscule compared to bigger producing countries, making it number 9 or 10 (depending on the source and year) in total output volume.

Up to the early 1800s, Guatemala produced and exported dyes for the budding international clothing industry. When chemical dyes cut off that lucrative stream in the 1870s, Guatemala’s dictator at the time, Justo Rufino Barrios, aware of the European craze for the exotic beverage, decided that the country would produce and export coffee. In a ruthless land grab, Barrios confiscated great swathes of land from the Catholic church but also expropriated nearly all communal land belonging to indigenous Mayans, virtually eliminating communal ownership of land in Guatemala. Coffee cultivation took off in the Amatitlan and Antigua regions in the southwest and by 1880, coffee made up 90% of Guatemala’s exports.

For many decades, it was the law of the land that indigenous laborers work the plantations as indentured labor to service the growing export market, although in the very beginning, some of the large landowners did gift small plots to their workers for their own subsistence needs. These plots are now among the small holdings that belong to 121,000 of Guatemala’s 125,000 coffee farmers. They account for roughly 47% of Guatemala’s coffee production. Though stats for farm-size in the coffee sector are not available, in the agricultural sector overall, the largest 2.5% of the plantations take up nearly two-thirds of all cultivated land, while 90% of the farms take up only one-sixth of agricultural land overall. Not surprisingly, conditions on coffee plantations are hardly any better than they were 100 years ago.

Guatemalan coffee production hit its high point in the 2000s, reaching around 5 million quintales (500,000 metric tons), only to fall in just a few years to 345,000 quintales (35,000 metric tons in 2004.)  Coffee remains Guatemala’s largest agricultural export but production has been in steady decline since coffee prices went through the floor. A slight economic reprise in the 2010s helped the sector bounce back – only to suffer mightily in the 2011 roya outbreak, which destroyed 20% of the crop. Then, from 2012 to 2015, the fungus caused a 25% drop in production when warmer temperatures combined with unusually high rainfall.

The leaf rust scourge was especially devastating to Guatemala’s world-renown high-end arabica varieties, with climate change upsetting the delicate balance these varieties need to survive and thrive, alternatively producing cold shocks, droughts or floods, and turbo-charging the leaf rust outbreak as higher temperatures help the disease spread to higher altitudes. But, the sector is slowly recovering from the latest rust outbreak mainly due to new areas being planted with more rust tolerant plants.

And it is gradually paying off. Coffee production for MY2019 is now forecast at 3.3 million 60-kilo bags, with exports for the marketing year MY2018 stable at 3.1 million bags. And planted area has been revised up 9%, from 277,000 ha to 305,000 ha (754,000 acres).

Consumption of local coffee has finally started to catch on as well, mainly in the capital, Guatemalan City, and now represents 13% of the country’s production. About 70% of internal consumption is roasted ground coffee and 30% is soluble, with consumption for MY2019 forecast at 440,000 bags. Annual consumption in Guatemala is an estimated 1.6 kg per person, the second-highest in Central America, and double what it was just five years ago.

Much of these hard-won improvements can be traced to Anacafé, the country’s coffee board, founded in 1960 by the Guatemalan legislature. Anacafé is responsible for advising the government on all things coffee and was an active player in getting the government to ratify a law earlier this year that will extend the Coffee Trust, which provides low-interest loans for coffee farmers, for 25 more years.

Anacafé has also taken on the important work of defining the Guatemalan brand as a whole and branding each of the major coffee-producing regions under the banner “A Rainbow of Choices”.

The work started in the early 1990s when Anacafé set about defining Guatemala’s coffee-producing regions based on cup profile, climate, soil, and altitude. The result was a palette of brands, each representing one of eight distinct regions producing strictly hard bean (SHB), a classification indicating superior quality shade-grown coffee grown at altitudes higher than 4,500 feet above sea level. Each has its own pack design within an overall look, and the brand names are both evocative and informative:

Acatenango Valley, Antigua Coffee, Traditional Atitlan, Rainforest Coban, Fraijanes Plateau, Highland Huehue, New Oriente, and Volcanic San Marcos.

Each region has its own unique microclimate and specific growing and harvest conditions. The best-known worldwide is Antigua, with mineral-rich volcanic soil, lots of sun, and just the right amount of rain. Antiguan coffee, with its unusual sweetness, rich aroma and elegant well-balanced cup profile is Guatemala’s flagship coffee. In fact, it is so well-known and has fetched such high prices that growers from all over the country and even outside began shipping cherry to the region for processing, then marketing it as Antiguan coffee. In 2000, the Antiguan Growers Association was founded to provide full traceability. It now certifies coffees as Genuine Antigua-grown and monitors coffee processing in that region.

West of Antigua, on the other side of the Acatenango and Fuego volcanoes, is the sandy-soiled, mineral-rich Acatenango Valley. Acatenango beans are grown at up to 2,000 meters (6,500 ft), still mostly hand-harvested, sorted, washed and sun-dried, with harvest season from December to middle of March. The Acatenango region has its own Coffee-Growers Association, founded in 2006, and was awarded a Designation of Origin in 2012. Typical varieties are caturra, bourbon, and catuaí. Its cup profile is markedly acidic with fragrant aroma, balanced body, and a clean lingering finish.

San Marcos is the warmest of the eight SHB regions, and has the most rainfall - as much as 200 inches (5,000 mm) a year.  San Marcos’ rainy season is earlier than other regions, which means earliest flowering plants, and an early harvest season, from December to March. Remote, mountainous and hard to reach, most plantations in San Marcos have their own processing mills. Coffee is usually pre-dried in the sun and finished in mechanical Guardiola driers due to unpredictable rainfall patterns. The cup profile features delicate floral notes in both aroma and taste, pronounced acidity, and good body.

The Fraijanes Plateau has the most active of Guatemala’s three erupting volcanoes, the Pacaya volcano. These eruptions keep the mineral content of the soil high. It also gets a lot of rain, humidity, fog, and heavy dew, but a very sunny dry season burns off clouds quickly allowing for sun-drying in all of the Fraijanes Plateau despite a relatively short harvest season from December to February. Cup profile: bright and persistent acidity; aromatic with a defined body.

Atitlán is the volcanic region with the richest soil in terms of organic matter. Almost all (90%) of the region’s coffee is grown right on the slopes of the volcanoes along Lake Atitlán, with winds blowing off the lake cooling the microclimate. The harvest season runs from December to March. Cup profile: aromatic with bright citrus acidity and full body.

Huehuetenango is one of three non-volcanic regions, with the highest altitude (over 2000m/6,500ft) of the eight. Hot, dry winds blowing in from the Tehuantepec plain of Mexico temper the cold mountain air. The high altitudes and predictable climate are favorable to growing high-quality, unique-flavored coffee. The average harvest season is January through April. Because Huehuetenango is also a very remote region, pretty much all producers  process their own coffee using the region’s multitudinous rivers and streams to power mills. Cup profile: Fine, intense acidity with a full body and pleasant wine notes.

Nueva Oriente has had small producers growing coffee in the region since the 1950s. Once one of the poorest and most isolated areas of Guatemala, Nueva Oriente is now vibrant and evolving as all the resident farmers have switched from other crops to coffee. Oriente has a rainy, cloudy weather profile with volcanic soil made of metamorphic rock, which is distinct from later volcanic type soil. Its average harvest season is from December to March. Cup profile: well balanced and full-bodied with a chocolaty flavor.

With this array of exceptional specialty coffees, Guatemala is recognized on the world stage, most recently with three green coffee micro-lots scoring 90+ at the 2019 Guatemala Cup of Excellence. Guatemalan coffee is now a must-have for specialty cafés and coffee aficionados all over the globe. So, it is hard to imagine that this evolving and exceptional sector is facing collapse as record numbers of smallholders and much-needed laborers leave coffee poverty to try to emigrate to the US. Just another conundrum in the world of luxury coffee.