Guatemala produces some of the best coffee in the world, in fact it's #2 after Columbia in the high grade coffee market. In 2012/13 Guatemala produced 3.72 million 60kg bags of green coffee. Most of this is exported however, more & more very nice coffee shops popping up in Antigua serving some of the good stuff to cater for the growing tourist market.

Over half the coffee produced is exported to the US, representing 1/8 of the country's GNP and generating about 1/3 of Guatemala's foreign exchange. I also recently learnt that after oil, coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world- crazy right!

Seeing as coffee is kind of a big deal here, I decided I wanted to learn a bit more about this magic bean and how it ends up in my cup. A friend of a friend worked for an NGO there called As Green As It Gets. This NGO has helped local coffee farmers from San Miguel Escobar (village on outskirts of Antigua) form a co-operative, offers them loans to purchase land & machinery and then helps them negotiate better prices for their coffee for export by providing a direct international supply chain. They also assist in packaging & marketing and of course offer tours explaining the whole coffee producing process for people like me.

We started our tour meeting one of the farmers from the co-operative, who showed us his land, which at 20 minutes hike uphill offered spectacular views, but a journey I do not envy with 40kg of coffee on my back like they do at harvest time. He explained there are 7 different types of Guatemalan Arabica beans, and showed us the 3 types that are grown in in this area; Bourbon, Caturra and Catuai.

He explained that coffee seedlings are grown for up to a year before they are transplanted into the field, where they take 3-4 years to bear any of their bright red fruit. In these early days the main work of the farmers is keeping the ground around the plants clear to help prevent disease. In 2012 a type of leaf rust fungus called Roya which kills the leaves on coffee trees and make the plant produce less, went rampant affecting 40% of the coffee plants in Guatemala. Another year like that could be disastrous for families here so farmers are being very vigilant for signs of the disease.

At harvest time, everyone gets involved, it's a huge source of employment with people coming from all over the nearby villages to help out. The picked beans are put in a pulping machine which separates the seed from the outer fruit and then fermented for 24 hours. The beans are dried on concrete patios, rooftops or pretty much any accessible large surface.

When dried the husks are removed from the beans which are then sorted by size, colour and defect, most of which is still done by hand. The beans are then roasted, packaged and shipped around the world.

At harvest time the farmers use the machines bought by the co-operative to speed up some of the processes, however for our visit we got the opportunity to see how things are done traditionally. We went back to our guide's family house where his wife showed us how to roast the beans on a large pan on the open fire. The smell was incredible but the heat in the tiny kitchen was stifling, so I could only imagine how hot it would have got roasting the entire harvest in the past.

We then gathered round a table and had one of the freshest cups of coffee I'm sure I will ever have in my life. I have to say it was fantastic and not only the flavor but because I now had a better understanding of the work that goes into every cup that we take for granted every morning. Organisations like As Green As It Gets make such a difference to the coffee growers in communities like this helping them get a fair price for their product and bring some stability to their lives. If you want to know more about what they do, want to try some of their coffee, or want to donate, their web page along with other interesting pages on coffee in Guatemala is listed below:

http://asgreenasitgets.org/

http://www.guatemalancoffees.com/index.php/exports

http://www.equalexchange.coop/history-of-coffee-in-guatemala