This story is about the coffee production of smallholders in Guatemala. Guatemala is an unequal country with a lot of contrast. Smallholders produce a large part of the food and a significant amount of the coffee Guatemala exports. Most are tiny farms: the areas where they grow coffee are very small. The possibilities for them to develop are very limited due to the small area. This is a complicated problem in Guatemala.
Mateo, CEO of Manos Campesinas, grew up in a local community and was interested in agriculture since he was 20 years old. He works with the smallholders and markets the coffee they produce.
There are many steps involved in making good coffee – if one of those steps goes wrong, the necessary quality cannot be maintained, and the coffee can no longer be sold. It’s a hard job you have to do with great care. But coffee farmers get a lot of satisfaction out of it by working on the farm with the whole family and producing a great product.
There are two important challenges. Firstly, to produce the productivity of farmers’ coffee plots. Sometimes the technology they use to produce coffee is not particularly good. With the help of “Manos Campesinas” it has been possible to double the production level in many cases. Second, they are looking for new conscious buyers from the “developed” countries, because they can charge more money for the coffee there than in Guatemala, which enables the farmers to create more sustainable technologies and gives them a better salary.
Here is a brief overview of how to make coffee beans:
- Remove the fruit
- Ferment the beans
- Spread on a larger surface
- Leave in the sun to dry
- Pack in bags
- Transport
The logistic of exporting coffee is in the following way: It is grown on a mountain, then it’s brought to and stored in a warehouse in the region, and is then transported to Guatemala City. Machines put the coffee into shipping containers, and then it’s shipped to Europe, the USA, or Japan. Wherever there are clients.
The situation is very difficult now for smallholders. Most importantly because the cultivation areas of the families are very small. The harvest is not enough to generate the income that the families need. Here it isn’t like on the big coffee plantations. They don’t get paid every week. There are weeks when they work a lot, and then weeks with no work at all. It’s hard to provide for the family.
Often these small families don’t own the land they work on, and they have a risk of losing it all to some big company. Luckily there are some organizations like Manos Campesinas who buy the land for the communities as a gift, but a lot of people leave Guatemala because they don’t own any land. Therefore, they don’t have a roof over their head, and they move to the United States or instance.
Despite all the challenges, the goal of Manos Campesinas is to help as many families as possible to be organized through them.
All this information has been taken from the film “Coffee For Life”, which is available on Waterbear, a YouTube-like streaming service with sustainable and inspiring films.

It may be a nice project for me to try and make my own coffee beans! Nice one Stan!