About CAFECO

Cafeco (Cafetaleros de la Concordia), is a 540-member cooperative founded by Jose Arguello, the 3 times COE winner whose farm is in the highest mountains of La Concordia. The coop was founded in 2015 in order to consolidate the coffees from Jose’s small scale neighbours and attend a growing specialty market looking for consistent qualities and traceability.  

In addition to market access, Cafeco provides many services to its members:

• Certified seeds at cost price, in order for producers to have solid varietals that will face today’s climatic challenges.  

• Cafeco’s team of agronomists advise members on organic farming and farm management for yield optimization.  

• Cafeco’s lab and in-house Q grader cups each producer’s coffee individually, providing feedback and data for decision making.  

• They support farmers with financing when needed, whether it is for the preparation of the next crop, or for a longer term renovation project.  

The lack of knowledge and the lack of access to financing are small scale growers’ biggest obstacles, but Cafeco strives to provide those services to support and maintain the livelihood of La Concordia’s coffee producers. Ensambles supports QC and access to roasters who will recognise the value of Cafeco to their community.

BACKGROUND

Chiapas is the biggest coffee producing state in Mexico, providing 40% of the country’s total coffee production. Located above Huehuetenango in Guatemala, the first plantations in Chiapas date back to the mid-19th century and originated from Guatemala. Initially Chiapas was known for its large farms - typically owned by Europeans, who  had settled in the country following the Second World War. However, the Mexican Revolution in the 1920s led to a  redistribution of those large farms, splitting up the land. Today, while there are still a few big plantations, most producers in Chiapas are small scale land owners with an average farm size of 3 hectares.   

Ensambles have chosen to work in a specific area of Chiapas called La Concordia, because it is in the buffer zone of the  UNESCO protected biosphere reserve of Triunfo Verde. The great strength of coffee from this area is its cultivation  practices: most farms are polycultures and are located under shade, and producers do not recur to synthetic inputs for growing crops. This type of agriculture is environmentally friendly, but has costs in terms of productivity, making Chiapas - and Mexican coffee in general - not very price competitive compared to monoculture countries  such as Brazil or Colombia. However, Chiapas certainly wins out on low ecological impact.