Café de Mujeres de COMAL Organic FW

With support from COMAL, the female producers who contributed to the Café de Mujeres lot focus on improving coffee quality and their farms’ environmental sustainability. They participate in livestock sharing projects, produce their own organic fertilizers, attend workshops about entrepreneurship and financial literacy and regularly renovate their rootstock to keep trees healthy and productive. 

We contribute a premium from every bag of COMAL Mujeres sold to support a traveling medical and dental clinic. The medical and dental clinic, organized by the exporter, UNEX, runs 12 week-long clinics per year and serves 300+ producers in each week of operation.

The premiums from each bag of COMAL Mujeres will go specifically towards supporting women’s health. UNEX met with a doctor to determine the most impactful way to support women’s health in the communities they’re serving. Premiums from these sales will go to supplying complete vitamin tablets that will provide nutrients that are underrepresented in their diets and promote healthy, long-lasting lives.   

While coffee is the main cash crop for these producers, they also cultivate honey, fruit trees and subsistence crops like maize and beans. They also plant trees to preserve biodiversity and protect reserves of groundwater as well as a variety of flowers and plants that attract bees and increase their honey production.

Each producer processes and dries their own coffee on small patios. They all have their own small pulpers, fermentation tanks, washing systems and parabolic dryers. COMAL organizes the collection of dried parchment from members and delivers it to the FECCEG dry mill in Quetzaltenango. Here, the quality team analyzes each lot. Depending on the quality, it will either be kept separate and sold as a microlot or blended with other coffees from the same producer organization and quality group. 

Strictly High Grown (SHG) specifies the altitude at which the coffee was grown. A coffee must be grown at 1,200 meters above sea level or higher to be considered SHG. The higher altitude and lower temperatures mean that the coffee fruit matures more slowly, creating a denser bean.  

EP stands for European Preparation. EP beans are Screen 15+ with a low defect tolerance. 

La Federación Comercializadora de Café Especial de Guatemala (FECCEG) was created in 2006 in response to the coffee crisis at the start of the century. The aim of the organization is to develop programs with more impact on the coffee producing communities, to get better access to the international coffee market and to consolidate export logistics. The organization supports its member organizations and producers with technical support, crop diversification programs, education about integrated farming and support with Organic and Fairtrade certification.