Here's what Raw Materials the importer of this coffee have to say about it:
In Mexico, our work is based in Oaxaca and Chiapas. From afar, Mexico is a growing economic force, ranked 64th globally in GDP per capita. However, the coffee-producing states in southern Mexico face a very different economic reality. Oaxaca and Chiapas are the two poorest states in Mexico with poverty rates of 60-80% and extreme poverty rates of 20-40%
Production yields have become dangerously low in these regions. Over the last ten years coffee leaf rust disease and the lack of financial or agricultural means to tackle it has reduced production by up to 90% in some regions. The average yield in Oaxaca is now just 100kg of parchment per hectare. For context, in Colombia, the average yield is 2,400kg per hectare.
The vast majority of Mexico’s 500,000 coffee producers are smallholder farmers and have one hectare or less of land under coffee. This makes the average annual production for many producers just 100kg, making coffee farming more and more unsustainable. This is fuelling widespread migration to urban centres in Mexico and the United States. In short, coffee production is disappearing.
Cafe El Zapoteco
Is an association of 180 coffee producing families from three towns in the Sierra Juarez. The Sierra Juarez, as well as being the birthplace of Benito Juarez- Mexico’s first President of indigenous origin- is a temperate mountain range to the north of Oaxaca city.
Cafe El Zapoteco is led by Romulo Chavez. Romulo has been working for several years now to establish direct relationships with buyers in order to obtain higher prices for the producers of Cafe El Zapoteco. He has also fostered a very strong communal outlook for the association and its producers.
The central point of the Cafe El Zapoteco cooperative is the town of Santo Domingo Cacalotepec. This name is composed of both Spanish and Zapotec. Cacalotepec means ‘mountain of the raven’, which you can see depicted on the bags from this producer group, as a raven with a coffee cherry in its mouth.
CAFE EL ZAPOTECO
Most members of the association are of Zapotec heritage and speak Spanish as second language after Zapoteco. There is a very strong, communal aspect to Cafe El Zapoteco across its three towns that is deeply rooted in the historical ties of the community to the region.
Rather than employ pickers during the harvest, when a member’s coffee is ready to be picked, several neighbours will help the producer to harvest their coffee. Instead of payment, the producer whose coffee is being harvested is expected to cook lunch for everyone and in turn, to help pick the coffee of those who helped them when their coffee is ready.
Farm sizes range from 0.5 to 5 hectares but the average member has less than one hectare of coffee and produces between 100 and 150 kilos of parchment per year. The coffees are pulped and fermented, often in hand built, wooden tanks, then dried on petates, traditional woven mats.
