As Roger and I got together in Cali - Colombia, for a trip to Chile last year, we started contemplating the idea of exporting Specialty Coffee to the United States, since we were going to be living in one of the most recognized coffee growing regions in the world, that is Pitalito – Huila, Colombia.
Therefore, as soon as we got back to Colombia we started visiting farms and watching as many videos (tutorials), about the Specialty Coffee business as we could. We, quickly learned that there are several markets for coffee, industrial (pasilla), normal and special coffees. We also found out that Pitalito - Huila produces some of the best quality coffees in the world, but the majority of the farmers are unaware of this, consequently most of them do not have good procedure practices because they have not been taught by the big exporting companies how to maintained the added value of their product, just so they can keep exploiting them. In other words the farmers do not have a motivation to better the procedures because they would be payed the same amount for their coffee anyways.Therefore, we decided to help them understand the business of specialty coffees, so that they can compete and keep the added value of their product in their farms. For this purpose we have contracted a company of experts in the matter who have developed a program of technical assistance for six months with the farmers that we have selected in order to teach and assist them with the procedures. all this with the purpose of making the business sostenible for many years to come. In this program we will work in three different fronts of which we will talk in a separate entrance of this blog:
