Coffee is more than a delectable drink – it’s an invaluable source of income for farmers around the globe and one of Honduras’ two primary exports after bananas.

Honduran coffee production accounts for 3.8% of world total supply. Once seen as generic blend base coffee, Honduran microlots are now making waves internationally. From high elevation regions on Honduras’ northern borders with Nicaragua and El Salvador down to tropical lowlands there’s something here for every palate and texture preference in terms of taste and texture.

Honduras owes much of its recent turnaround in reputation to a generational shift in leadership and significant investments into its coffee infrastructure. Since Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and the coffee leaf rust outbreak of 2011, young Honduran entrepreneurs have worked to improve quality Honduran beans, and their efforts have proven immensely fruitful.

Since 1988, Cooperativa Cafetalera Sanmarquena is a multigenerational coffee producer group comprising 1,500 member farmers on Botija Ridge in San Marcos de Colon. Their philosophy aims to improve families and communities through responsible production practices such as sustainable agriculture promotion and providing technical assistance training sessions for members.

The group’s primary mission is to produce high-quality coffee while simultaneously improving lives of members and communities around them. Their production methods aim to preserve the environment while creating premium cups with delicious aroma, flavor and acidity – something the co-op prides itself on with all their coffee certified organic by USDA and Fair Trade certified; using only natural ingredients without chemical fertilizers or pesticides – as well as offering minimum price guarantees to farmers who supply the crop.

A cornerstone of COMSA’s model is teaching its member farmers to better manage their land and cultivate healthy coffee crops. To this end, they use various techniques postharvest hand sorting of cherry, flotation to remove less dense beans, and long drying times – in order to get maximum quality beans and yield from their farms. Producers at COMSA are encouraged to learn from each other and share knowledge through week-long seminars known as Pata de Chucho (the footprints left by a stray dog), which symbolises how everything about what COMSA stands for.

Genuine Origin, Molinos’ sister company in Honduras, cuts out the middleman by buying directly from farmers. This ensures they can offer roasters who work with them a range of high-end microlots and regional blends with complete traceability and transparency at every stage. They even constructed a small pilot wet mill for more centralized processing control over every batch of green coffee from start to finish.