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Maya Vinic 08/02/16
Visit to their Warehouse
During the entirety of the harvest season, from December to May in the case of Maya Vinic, the
warehouse is open from Monday to Friday to receive the coffee of the producers.
The receptor, the individual responsible for its reception, weighs the
coffee and counts the defects to determine its quality and quantity.
The receptor also smells the coffee to detect any contamination from
gasoline or chemicals that may have occurred. Based on this data, the receptor gives a
receipt to the member determining how much he will get paid for his coffee. A
penalty can be imposed if the coffee humidity is above the 12.5% required by
the coop. With his receipt in hand, the farmer can then go see the person responsible of
payment. A copy of the receipt is kept by the coop and by the producer. This
season, the producer was paid 23 pesos for a kilo of pergamino.
Dry
Processing Plant: 5 Basic Steps
1st This is a first cleaning step where the pergamino coffee is passed through a first filter that, by shaking, takes out most of the garbage.
2nd The second machine takes of the outer shell and skin of the beans. The coffee bean after this step is no longer called pergamino. It is called oro verde. There is a significant weight difference between the two, the oro verde being much lighter.
3rd The third machine classifies the beans by their size. The smaller beans, which do not fit a quality standard high enough to be exported, are sold in the local market through Maya Vinic's roasted coffee project.
4th This machine removes defective beans that do not conform to export standards.
5th This step takes out the smaller beans to be sure there is a consistency in the size of the exported product. At this step also, the rejected beans are directed to the local market, as either traditional or gourmet.
6th This step is now contracted in Comitan since the coop still doesn´t own an electric eye. They plan to buy one next year. The electronic eye classifies the coffee by 4 different colors: black (called mancha), yellow (taste acidity), white, and green (good quality for export).
Two administrative staff members of the coop operate the machinery. They usually also contract two additional persons to help carry the bags and weight them, before and after the process. As an example we processed 4 kilos of pergamino. Only 2.5 kilos remained as oro verde and this was considered a normal lost.
The wet processing (depulping, washing and fermentation of the coffee) is taken care of on site at the farm of the producer.
Visit to Puebla, a community of Maya Vinic
Puebla is located between 800 and 900 meters above sea level.
Their harvest season starts in December and goes until April and includes 3 or 4
picking periods.
Our group was invited to pass the night at the house of Gorge Santis Argez, a producer member of Maya Vinic located in Puebla. We woke up to the sound of their new electric corn grinder. After a good breakfast we took a little walk to their coffee fields, were we had the chance to pick some coffee beans.
These experienced farmers revealed to us how they select the cherries that will
be use for reproduction. The nutrients of the plant are concentrated in the middle of the tree,
which is where you’ll find the stronger seeds. Then it is important to take the cherry
off the middle of the branch. You also have to choose the cherries that are in
the middle of the clusters. These fruits are depulped manually because the
depulping machine normally used could hurt them. Then the seeds are dried in filtered sunlight for two days. They are then planted in organic compost mixed
with organic lime, to control the Ph level. After two or three months, the little
plants start to sprout up. Two little leaves will eventually create what is called a
butterfly. At this stage, the little
plant can be transfer to a bag, were it will spend around 8 months and become a
little tree. Maya Vinic suggests to its producers to let the plant grow for two
years in that bag before adding it to their parcel of land. Once planted, it
will take between two or three years before it starts producing cherries.
We also
talked briefly about the different kinds of Arabica coffee. Maya Vinic promotes the
Arabe variety since they consider it as having a higher quality than the Catura or the
Bourbon variety.
The
coffee fields require constant attention and lots of work all year long, not
only during the harvest. They have to be cleaned three to four times a year.
Farmers have to maintain a good variety of shade trees interspersed with their coffee trees. A tree commonly used
for shade is the Shaloom for its capacity to fix nitrogen in the soil. Many
fruits are also grown in the fields, like bananas or oranges, since they can
either be consumed by the family or sold in the local market for additional
income.
During the harvest, producers have to be very careful and pick only the mature fruit, even though this usually means that they must attend their parcel of land every day. The beans that are picked before maturity will not ferment properly, which has a direct affect on the quality of the coffee. The next step is to depulp the fruit, if possible the same day, but many farmers do it the day after, lacking the necessary time. The 3rd step is to ferment the coffee in a water basin for one night, after which it is washed with clean water. Finally, the coffee needs to be dried on a patio for four or five days, until it reaches a 12.5% level of humidity. They will then do a quickly test the bean, put it into bags and bring it to the Maya Vinic Warehouse.
In
Puebla, the producers have an average of 0.5 hectares of land with a yield of
about 6 quintals. A quintal is equal to 59 kilos. At the time we visited, Maya
Vinic was paying the producer 23 pesos (the exchange rate is 10.7 pesos per dollar)
while the coyotes were offering 21 pesos. We witnessed the insistent
presence of coyotes even in this remote community. In the morning, many
trucks go by screaming the daily price in their speaker in order to
convince the producer to sell them their coffee.
