Fresh Cup

MAY 2014

Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.

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64 Fresh Cup Magazine | freshcup.com EXPERIMENTS WITH TRADITION of the border. The brass-hued lights of Ocotepeque on the Honduran side brighten under twilight in the valley. Once dinner has been heartily eaten, all compliments are paid to cook Nena Hernandez, a shy young woman whose only ostentation is the highlights in her hair. Perhaps it takes a quiet, measured, task-driven person to construct such a well-executed meal from scratch. Those same qualities might be why Isabel says Nena is an able manager of the finca's newest lot, El Pimiento. In 2010, Sergio gave the forest- covered tract of land to Monika Larde, Isabel's German-born mother, to design several acres of coffee produc- tion. In years prior, Monika attended several seminars offered by the Salvadoran Coffee Council and agricul- tural think tank PROCAFE. Drafting plans for the new lot, she collaborated closely with Nena and the farm workers. Though designs for El Pimiento pre- date the coffee leaf rust epidemic cur- rently wracking the region, the small lot could very well become a proving ground for the creative brand of agri- cultural practices needed to overcome the ongoing crisis. he next morning over breakfast, we discuss the state of specialty coffee in El Salvador. The Salvadoran Coffee Council reported that December 2013 exports dropped forty-four percent compared to December 2012. The decline is on pace to surpass the coun- cil's summer prediction of a thirty-six percent decrease for the entire 2013– 2014 season. On par with the rest of Central America, rust is reducing the Salvadoran specialty crop by half, says Sergio. Specialty farmers are debating the use of chemicals to combat the leaf fungus. Some world-renowned growers in El Salvador are eschewing organic certification in the interest of survival. Leaf rust, here called la roya, is a capricious beast and its spread has been attributed to everything from wind to lack of pruning and even the clothes of workers. Finca Los Planes grows coffee at 5,000–5,500 feet, an altitude thought to be impervious to rust, considering its high and dry air. That perception changed through the recent seasons of extended rain and higher temperatures. Isabel recalls the recent infection of Cerro Los Tamales, the farm's highest lot. "One week the trees were healthy, and the next there was roya," she says in a nonplussed tone. Small producers find scant help from a government in which they wield little power. By November of 2012, the Coffee Farmer's Association of El Salvador's shares in the national bank slipped below two percent, a major fall from its role as the primary share- holder for much of the twentieth cen- tury. Sergio is the association's newly "One week the trees were healthy, and the next there was roya." T Clockwise from top left: Norma, a coffee harvester for thirty five years in the village of Los Planes; rust-stricken coffee leaves; farm owner Sergio Ticas with PTÕs Jeff Taylor in the Secret Garden lot; ripening Yellow Caturra cherries. May14_magazine.indd 64 4/18/14 10:46 AM

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