Do You Know Your Coffee Farmer?

How Microlots Make for Better Coffee

I am on the board of a non-profit called Farmer to Farmer. We bring in coffee from Honduras in a form of trade called “Direct Trade.” This is a step beyond “Fair Trade” in that we buy directly from the farmers. Our operations manager, Amber, is starting to refer to this as “relationship coffee.”

When we buy directly from the co-op in Honduras, we keep each farm family’s coffee separate. Each 150-pound burlap bag is from a unique small farm. This is what’s known as a “microlot,” and microlots can make for better coffee.

Every coffee bean has a story behind it. A real person plants the little coffee tree and cares for it for at least three years before anything can be harvested. That little plant needs water, good soil, and weeding in order to produce an amazing crop, or any crop for that matter. Then the farmer needs to pick the fruit at the peak of ripeness and protect the quality through every stage of the processing, drying, and export.

There is so much effort that goes into every cup of coffee. At each step, there are ways to make it better. But each action to produce better coffee requires skill and knowledge. When Farmer to Farmer gets a microlot from each of the farmers in the coffee co-op, those farmers have a feedback loop to help them know how the hard work is paying off.

We recently got our cupping results for the 2023 crop of Honduran coffee that arrived in the warehouse in late July…