From Crop to Cup in Guatemala: Inside Our January 2026 Producer Trip

Every bag of Cafe Campesino coffee starts with a single farmer. Not in a warehouse. Not on a shipping dock. It starts on a steep mountainside in Guatemala, in the hands of a farmer who has been picking coffee cherries since before most of us had our first cup.

In January 2026, a delegation from Cafe Campesino, Cooperative Coffees, and several of our retail partners traveled to Guatemala to visit two of our longtime producer partners: Asociación Chajulense in Chajul and Manos Campesinas in Xeila. What we experienced over those days — the labor, the generosity, the challenges, and the hope — is the story behind every cup we roast.

This is what “crop to cup” actually looks like.

The Delegation: Who Went and Why It Matters

Producer trips are central to how we do business at Cafe Campesino. They are not vacation. They are accountability — a chance to look our farmer partners in the eye, understand what they are facing, and bring that understanding home to the people who drink their coffee every morning.

Our January 2026 delegation included Cafe Campesino’s Tripp Pomeroy and Geoffrey Hennies, Cooperative Coffees CFO Bill Harris, and a group of retail partners and community members: Christy and Martin Deen of Drip Thru Coffee, Chasidy Cross of Banjo Coffee, Lee Pinnell of the Cafe Campesino Community Coffee House, Bren Dubay of Koinonia, Atiba Mbiwan of The BRAG Dream Team, television producer David Zelski, and community investor Ed Outlaw.

Bringing our partners to origin is intentional. When the people selling our coffee to their customers have walked the same mountain paths as the farmers who grew it, every conversation about that coffee changes. The connection becomes real.

Asociación Chajulense: Chajul, Guatemala

A Cooperative Born in Crisis

Asociación Chajulense was founded in 1989 in the municipality of San Gaspar Chajul, in the Ixil Triangle region of Guatemala’s Quiché department. The cooperative emerged during one of the darkest chapters in Guatemalan history — the tail end of a civil war that devastated indigenous Ixil communities. According to The Coffee Trust, the cooperative provided one of the few economic opportunities in the region and went on to become the first fair trade, organic coffee association in Guatemala.

Today, Chajulense works with 18 coffee-growing communities. They serve 10 clients — eight in the United States and two in Europe — and export approximately 25 containers of coffee per year, totaling roughly 1,045,800 pounds annually. Cooperative Coffees has been purchasing Chajulense coffee since 2006, when they were among the first to bring the cooperative’s fair trade organic coffee into the U.S. market.

Our key contacts during the visit were General Manager Romaldo Pérez and Technical Coordinator Roderico Galindo Garcia.

Walking the Mountain: The Community Farm Visit

High above Chajul, our delegation walked the steep, densely forested slopes where Chajulense farmers hand-pick coffee cherries every day during harvest. There are no shortcuts on these mountains. Farmers move carefully through the terrain, selecting only the ripest, highest-quality cherries by hand.

After filling bags weighing 60 to 75 pounds each, they carry six of those bags roughly a quarter mile back to their depulping centers — almost entirely uphill. This is daily work, performed with quiet precision and a level of physical endurance that is difficult to grasp until you have tried to walk the same ground yourself.

Our farm visit centered on three cooperative members. Jose Ismael Raymundo Kamivee has been an active member of Chajulense for 20 years and hosted our entire delegation at his family’s home. Pedro de Paz Raymundo has been a member for 10 years. Baltazar Raymundo Ceto, a member for 14 years, serves as a community promoter — helping to connect and support other farmers in his village.

Each farmer cultivates approximately one hectare of land, supporting around 4,400 coffee plants. Most are third- or fourth-generation coffee growers. The work is inherited, and so is the knowledge.

A Moment of Extraordinary Hospitality

After the farm walk, Jose Ismael welcomed the entire delegation into his home. His family brewed fresh coffee and served the group. The house was very modest with dirt floors and very few electronics, yet the family’s hospitality was genuine and incredibly welcoming.

For many in our delegation, this was the most memorable moment of the entire trip: a family that works this hard, every single day, and still opens their door wide for visitors they have never met. That kind of generosity is not something you can simply read about and fully understand. You have to experience it. It is truly humbling.

Inside the Processing Plant

Coffee from all of Chajulense’s growing communities is brought together at the central processing facility. A single elected community representative from each village oversees collection and transport. Each batch goes through two weigh-ins upon arrival.

Approximately 2,500 pounds of coffee beans are processed daily at the plant. The beans go through a largely mechanized sorting process and are separated into three quality grades:

• Grade 1 (Export): The highest quality coffee, destined for international clients — including Cafe Campesino.
• Grade 2 (Secondary): Mid-grade coffee sold to clients in Belgium.
• Grade 3 (Local): Lower-grade coffee sold in Guatemalan domestic markets.

At the time of our visit, a shipment of 250 bags was headed to Atlanta. The cooperative’s annual revenue stands at approximately $3 million, with 75 to 80 percent of profits returned directly to the farming communities and roughly 20 percent retained by Chajulense for operations. Annual electricity costs for the processing plant run about $10,000 — and it is worth noting that processing and transportation costs have roughly doubled since 2024.

Manos Campesinas: Xela, Guatemala

Breaking Into International Markets

Our second major visit brought us to Manos Campesinas, a cooperative based in Xela, Guatemala. Manos Campesinas was founded in 1997 with direct support from the Catholic Church and a clear mission: improve farmer incomes by breaking into international coffee markets.

Today, the cooperative represents 1,200 farming families, each personally owning one hectare of farmland. Their primary warehouse is located in Malacatan, San Marcos, Guatemala. Our key contacts were General Manager Carlos Renoso, Commercial Manager Miguel Mateo, Administrator Veronica Chaculan, and Project Manager Evelyn Rojas, who oversees Fair Trade and Organic certifications.

The cooperative eventually separated from the Catholic Church after recognizing that community donations alone could not sustain long-term financial stability for farmers. In their early years, they relied on international NGO grants, but achieving full financial independence was always the primary goal. After roughly 10 to 12 years of outside support, they spent the next 12 to 15 years operating entirely on their own — a period during which they demonstrated remarkable resilience, maintaining profitability and continued exports even during periods of devastatingly low global coffee prices.

Today, Manos Campesinas receives some partner support, 100 percent of which passes directly to the coffee farmers.

Organic Farming: Born Out of Necessity

Organic practices at Manos Campesinas did not emerge from a top-down certification strategy. They evolved from a practical necessity — making the most efficient, sustainable use of limited land. When each family has only one hectare to cultivate, there is no margin for waste. That philosophy of careful stewardship remains central to how their communities farm today and is a powerful example of how sustainability can grow from the ground up, driven by the farmers themselves.

Setting the Price: A Regional Impact

One of Manos Campesinas’ most significant contributions to the region has been establishing a fair pricing standard for coffee. Historically, prices were dictated by local middlemen and multinational corporations, consistently shortchanging the small farmers who did the actual work of growing, harvesting, and processing the coffee.

By anchoring their pricing to the true cost of quality production, Manos Campesinas has shifted the regional standard in favor of producers — benefiting not just their own 1,200 members, but farmers across the area. In response to rising costs across the industry, the cooperative is now developing its own minimum price independent of prevailing fair trade rates, grounding every pricing decision in principle rather than market fluctuation.

The “Strange Business Model” — A Defining Moment

Sitting in the offices of Manos Campesinas in Xela, our delegation listened as General Manager Carlos Renoso and Cooperative Coffees CFO Bill Harris described something that stops most people the first time they hear it.

In traditional business, you negotiate your suppliers down. You push for the lowest possible price. That is the standard approach across most industries.

Cooperative Coffees operates differently. Rather than negotiating cooperatives like Manos Campesinas down to the lowest price the market will bear, Cooperative Coffees negotiates upward — actively advocating for higher prices for the farmers. As Harris put it during the meeting: “We all need farmers to be able to reinvest in their coffee operation, but we also need you — our customers — to continue growing your business.”

It is a model built on a simple but radical idea: that the people doing the hardest, most essential work in coffee deserve to be paid fairly for it. And that the long-term health of the entire supply chain — from the mountainside in Guatemala to the cup in your hand — depends on it.

This is not charity. It is a business principle. Cooperative Coffees is a green coffee importing cooperative made up of 23 community-based roasters across the U.S. and Canada, and every one of those roasters has made the decision that paying farmers fairly is not a cost — it is an investment in the future of coffee itself.

The Challenge of the Next Generation

Perhaps the most pressing long-term challenge facing Manos Campesinas — and cooperatives like them across Guatemala — is declining interest in coffee farming among young people. The core issue is structural: most families have just one hectare of land but often six or more children. Dividing that land among multiple heirs makes profitable cultivation nearly impossible, pushing young people toward other opportunities — often far from home.

Immigration to the United States and Mexico is further shrinking the available labor pool and driving up daily wages, which currently average about $20 per day. Everything is more expensive, and that trend shows no sign of reversing.

To address this, Manos Campesinas has launched several youth-focused initiatives, now active across six of their coffee communities:

• Cross-Farming: Introducing livestock alongside coffee — starting with free-range chickens for eggs and meat, with many families graduating to goats for greater profit. One community has already tripled the size of its chicken operation through this program.
• Financial Literacy Training: Representatives from the cooperative are teaching young farmers the business skills they need for economic independence.
• Community Exchange Program: Young people spend time in neighboring coffee communities, building connections and broadening their perspective on what farming as a livelihood can look like.
• Fertilizer Production: Converting unused parts of the coffee plant into fertilizer that is sold in local markets, creating an additional income stream from materials that would otherwise go to waste.

These projects are managed collaboratively between communities and parents, with guidance and support from the cooperative. The biggest obstacle to scaling them remains the same as always: not enough land.

Why Producer Trips Matter

It is easy to put the words “fair trade” on a label. It is much harder to actually live them — to fly to Guatemala, walk the mountains, sit in a farmer’s home, and look at the reality of what that label represents.

Producer trips are how we hold ourselves accountable. They are how we ensure that the supply chain behind every bag of Cafe Campesino coffee is not just a line on a logistics document, but a network of real people — with families, with challenges, with extraordinary resilience — who trust us to honor our end of the relationship.

When our retail partners — the owners of coffee shops, cafes, and community spaces across the country — travel with us, they bring that understanding back to their customers. They can tell the story of Jose Ismael’s hospitality, of the mountains above Chajul, of a cooperative that negotiates prices upward. That story is the difference between coffee as a commodity and coffee as a connection.

Taste the Difference

The coffee you drink has a history. It has a geography. It has names and faces behind it. If this story resonates with you, we invite you to explore our Guatemalan coffees and taste the work of these communities for yourself.

And if you are a coffee shop owner, roaster, or retailer interested in learning more about how our supply chain works — or about future producer trips — reach out to us. The door is always open. Just like Jose Ismael’s.