A recent headline in “Central America Today” reads: A richer, better, more sustainable bean - Central America turns to certified coffees to open new markets. The article explains how the region’s coffee market has been undergoing changes in the last decade. With consumers getting more demanding and sophisticated every day, Central America has begun to explore the new niche market of certified specialty coffees, thus conquering new markets and palates around the world.
The article highlights two issues:
- Central America is gaining ground in the production of specialty coffees, with coffee being produced as a differentiated product distinguished by degrees of acidity, body and balance, grown at varying altitudes and milled in varying ways.
- Independent third-party farm certification is fueling differentiation as well as demand in the international markets. In short: sustainable practices yield a premium product.
The WBCSD-SNV Alliance is currently investigating ways to professionalize the Honduran coffee production with a view to improving its competitiveness. This would especially concern the regions that have the potential to produce coffee of better quality and in higher quantities.
Coffee is fundamental for the national economy of Honduras; it is one of the country's most important export products, and also generates most of the employment in the rural areas, with an overall impact on more than 100’000 families.
The Alliance’s main objective is to set up a sustainable commercial alliance between small coffee producers and multinational coffee roasters and distributors, with the aim to increase jobs and income levels in the national coffee sector through the sales of UTZ CERTIFIED coffee.
UTZ CERTIFIED, one of the world’s largest coffee certification programs, provides independent assurance of responsible production and sourcing of the coffee, and creates opportunities for farmers to improve business practices and meet market expectations with regard to a set of social and environmental standards.
The project components that need to be put into place include productive technical assistance, quality control, value chain strengthening, market access, and learning. In effect, while Honduras produces excellent Arabica coffees and has a great potential to increase the amount of UTZ CERTIFIED coffee, the volume of quality coffee is still limited in mill process, transportation, local storage, traceability and socially and environmentally sustainable production guidelines.
As “Central America Today” puts it, “with the right market elements in place and demand growing, Central American farmers are left now with only one challenge to stay ahead of the competition from their large southern neighbors: they must continue to improve the quality of their beans.”
Ultimately, the goal is to increase, within three years, the amount of currently exported UTZ CERTIFIED coffee (that is, 60’000 bags of 60 kg each) by an additional 90’000 bags. Other expected results include a 10% revenue increase for some 1’500 certified coffee producers.
The Alliance is currently approaching coffee companies to gauge their interest in financing this initiative, and is discussing the potential for replicating and scaling up this collaboration to other coffee producing countries.
For more information on the Alliance’s work in the coffee sector in Honduras, please contact Mauricio Cercone, Marketing Advisor at SNV Honduras.
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