Christmas Brews – Week #2
Available until Wednesday 17th December 

Benjamin López is a third-generation coffee farmer. Though he grew up helping on his family’s farm, he didn’t plan to stay in coffee. That changed when he joined the Guatemalan national coffee group Anacafé as a technician supporting wet mill design and post-harvest processing. His work with cooperatives and large producers helped him understand the complexity and potential of coffee—and sparked his own interest in farming. After five years at Anacafé, three of which overlapped with starting his own farm, he committed fully to coffee. His farms are both inherited and self-purchased- a blend of family tradition and his entrepreneurial drive.

Ben’s farms are a mix of inherited land and personal investment. His plots include caturra, bourbon, and gesha varieties—grown under shade trees like avocado, peach, gravilea, and native forest species. Benjamin practices a hybrid approach to agriculture. Thirty percent of his land is managed organically, using compost made from coffee husk, lime, and chicken manure. This is applied on a rotating basis to conserve soil. He also uses chemical fertilization twice a year. Weed control is intensive, with manual clearing every 6–8 weeks. This year, he began testing Canavalia beans as a ground cover to fix nitrogen into the soil and reduce weeds and labor, a method drawn from eastern Guatemala’s corn systems. He manages coffee processing wastewater with a basic decanting system that recycles water and reuses solids as fertilizer.

This gesha coffee comes from 80 trees on Benjamin’s farm El Aguacate, which includes two small lots. He got the initial gesha seeds from a demonstrative Anacafe farm, and purchased additional seeds from the La Reforma farm. Processing for the natural gesha is very basic- cherries are brought down from the farm to his house where he has raised canopies that he designed based on his experience at Anacafé. The coffee finishes drying on his patios.

Benjamin has reflected a lot on infrastructure and labor. His workers earn more than the national minimum wage, but he acknowledges the ongoing challenge of fair compensation in a volatile market. He dreams of improving infrastructure, expanding his fermentation capacity, and lightening the physical load of farm work—freeing up time for experimentation and quality improvement. Benjamin says, “It’s hard to understand if you’ve never been to Guatemala—until recently, we carried coffee home on mules. We paved the road ourselves, with our neighbors. Every coffee plant here is worth gold. There are no forklifts, no trucks… only the sweat and backs of the people who work this land. He says that he is happy—especially knowing that someone far away is drinking his coffee. He hopes to one day meet the people who roast and brew it, to see where his work ends and theirs begins.j

PRICING TRANSPARENCY – We purchase directly from Benjamin. We paid Benjamin 2,500 quetzales per quintal (100 pounds of parchment) for two lots of parchment coffee. We then pay for transport to our chosen dry mill.