Fellow Drop Coffee: Guatemala Satchibal - Santi Marisol Juan Ramirez

This is a special coffee for Whiptail and we couldn’t be more excited to share it. By offering this coffee as a Fellow Drop coffee, we were able to buy Santi’s full lot of coffee this year which was 9 69kg bags in total.

About the Producers

Santi is a third generation coffee producer who lives with her parents and two siblings in the small community of Com. Her grandfather was the first in the family to work with coffee; before that, their farm produced subsistence crops like corn. When he inherited land from his parents, he planted coffee and learned about the crop.

The family passion for coffee was passed down to Santi from a young age. This led her to join the group Jovemcafe, which has helped the members with agronomy training and poised the members to better market their high-quality coffee.

About Jovemcafe: This group of 25 women has done inspiring work in the town of Com, supported by Primavera and The Chain Collaborative (TCC). Through TCC’s Community-Led Development Incubator, Jovemcafe has organized a two part project. First, they started a henhouse for egg-laying hens, so that the group can earn additional income by selling eggs. Second, they are creating a nursery for forest trees, as well as fruit and wood trees, to sell throughout the local community. They will also harvest the manure from the hens to use as organic fertilizer for the nursery.

“Participating in trainings has helped me to understand better how to market my coffee. In the past, we sold the coffee to coyotes that passed by our houses. Now we sell to La Central de Cafe, an exporter that offers us better prices and other services.”

Processing

The name Satchibal came from Santi’s grandparents, the original owners of the farm, and is related to the name of the microregion.

The coffee is harvested at peak ripeness, and then it is moved to the depulper, which is found on the farm itself. The depulper is manually powered, and the discarded cherry is left behind to be used as organic fertilizer. The coffee seeds, in the meantime, are brought on horseback to the home where the next phase of processing occurs.

In a shady spot, the coffee is placed in a container to ferment dry for about 10-14 hours. After the fermentation, the coffee is washed. Finally, the coffee is spread in the sun to dry. It stays in the sun for about 4-5 days, and the family turns the coffee once every half hour.

Price

This coffee was imported by Primavera Green Coffee

The FOB price for this lot was $3.98. [FOB price is the total price of the coffee up to the point of departure from the country; it includes farmgate/price paid to the grower, in-country transportation, and the cost of processing and preparation for export. It does not include the price of freight to the US, US warehousing, US customs charges, or the cost of moving coffee with the US.]

During the harvest season from January through March, the New York C price for coffee was an average of $1.89; the $3.98 FOB price for this coffee includes a significant premium for the farmer above the C market price, which reflects the excellent quality of this coffee. After being imported to a warehouse in the consuming country, the United States, the coffee cost was $5.75/lb. The cost of the shipping from the warehouse to our roastery made our final green price $5.87.

Avg. C Price (at the time of harvest): $1.89

F.O.B Price: $3.98

Ex-Warehouse: $5.75

Final Green Price: $5.87

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