Catracha Coffee Company and Uplifting the Santa Elena Community Through Specialty Coffee
One of our longest-standing relationships is with Catracha Coffee in Honduras, and year after year, we’ve been featuring coffee from Maria Adela Nolasco. I often build upon previous blogs and share updates every year we feature this coffee. However, I’ve realized that we have a handful of people who may be new to Catracha Coffee and Adela, and now is an opportune time to retell Catracha’s story.
Mayra Orellana-Powell was born and raised in the remote community of Santa Elena in Honduras. Marcala, the closest large city, is about an hour’s drive away and is known for producing specialty coffee. Years ago, most farmers there simply picked their cherries and sold them to middlemen who would then sell them to larger companies in Marcala to create regional lots. In general, Santa Elena farmers had little opportunity for growth in coffee; every year, the process was the same: harvest cherries, sell them unprocessed at whatever low price buyers are willing to pay, and find another source of income to help make ends meet.
meeting with Mayra (left) and our friend rosi (middle) at the 2024 sca specialty coffee epxo in chicago
While living in the US, Mayra saw the opportunities that specialty coffee could provide to the people of her hometown. Inspired by her grandmother Adelina–a coffee grower, teacher, and community leader–Mayra founded Catracha Coffee Company in 2010 to help farmers in Santa Elena access the specialty coffee market. Together with her husband, Lowell, their small operation of exporting traceable, specialty micro-lots from 13 smallholder producers has grown into a much larger operation that, in 2024, exported 500 bags (that’s two shipping containers!) from 56 coffee producers in Santa Elena. In 2017, they decided to live in Santa Elena full-time to continue their efforts to grow the company and contribute to the Santa Elena community.
sorting out unripe and defective cherries with adela during our visit in 2019. from left to right: adela, adela’s cousin, mayra, lowell, and xander, our lead roaster
Every Catracha farmer manages their own farm and processes coffee in their own wet-mill. They can attend monthly training sessions offered by Catracha, where they learn how to properly prune trees, improve their soil composition, and increase crop production through organic inputs like bokashi compost and homemade biofertilizers. Rather than invest in organic certifications (which are cost-prohibitive for the company's size), Catracha focuses more on relationships with roasters and coffee buyers to provide meaningful context and directs funds back into the community.
Maria adela’s coffee processing area at sunset
Catracha has a profit-sharing model, in which they pay coffee producers twice for their coffee: first when farmers deliver their coffee to Catracha in parchment (a protective layer covering the green bean that stays intact before milling), and second when the coffee has been sold, about 6 months later. In total, farmers received a farmgate price–what the industry calls the price a farmer is paid–of $2.50/lb for their coffee in 2024. With a minimum farmgate of $2/lb, farmers can have better margins that allow them to save and reinvest in their farms. For reference, this price is higher than the current Fairtrade minimum of $1.80/lb FOB–or Free on Board, which is a price that combines farmgate price and costs to prepare the coffee for export up to the port of exit. (On top of the FOB price, roasters pay for importation, logistics, storage, and sometimes financing and fees if working with an importer. This adds .60 cents to $1 or more per pound to the cost of green coffee.) In 2024, Catracha’s FOB price was $4.25: it covered the cost of trainings and workshops required for all Catracha farmers, warehousing and labor, training, milling and export costs, and transportation. An additional 25 cents was also added to fund Catracha Community, a non-profit Mayra and Lowell established to provide the Santa Elena community with long-term opportunities without taking resources from a farmer’s bottom line. Catracha community projects include an annual youth conference, public art workshops, seed trading and gardening, and handmade crafts that folks can choose to sell.
during the pandemic, catracha community was able to continue their workshops. here, fatima, adela’s youngest daughter (left), AND ADELA (RIGHT) WERE TIGHTENING YARN THAT WOULD BE USED TO MAKE KEYCHAINS THAT THEY COULD then sell.
When we started working with Catracha Coffee in 2016, we fell in love with Maria Adela’s coffee and have been buying it every year since. Under Catracha’s guidance, Adela honed her farm management skills and improved her wet mill. Over the years, she’s resurfaced the fermentation tank, added a washing channel to help lower the risk of coffee damage, resurfaced her drying patio, built raised drying beds, and purchased a motor to run her coffee depulper. In recent years, she’s put more effort into tending to her trees and using natural fungicides to protect her plants from leaf rust. Her farm now serves as a model farm for others looking to improve their farms. Each improvement Adela has made in her coffee operations has allowed her to increase her production steadily. Her first export in 2016 was four bags, and since 2021, it has grown to ten bags of specialty coffee.
picking ripe cherries at adela’s farm
dropping fresh-picked cherries into adela’s mechanical coffee pulper
Producing coffee with Catracha is a lot of work, but the rewards are plentiful. Farmers not only receive more payment and have the opportunity to save and invest in their farms and mills, but they also receive valuable training and education that they can apply throughout their years of farming.
The rise of specialty coffee is a response to the commodity coffee market (or C-market) that prioritizes volume and lacks transparency and traceability. Historically, the C-market pays low prices and relies heavily on supply and demand to determine prices. Often, specialty prices are determined by either the cost of production and/or the C-market price plus a premium. Since both the commodity and specialty markets use much of the same supply systems, it has been difficult for most specialty coffee to separate itself from the volatility of the C-market. As a result, the drastic price increase in the C-market also affects specialty coffee producers, including Catracha Coffee.
adela rotating coffees in parchment on her raised drying beds
In February of this year, the C-market hit a record high of $4.30/lb–which is double the price at the same time last year! When the C-market price is high, the price of purchasing any unprocessed cherry for commodity is also high, leaving farmers with little incentive to process their cherries. Catracha has been paying coffee producers higher prices since the beginning, and they work hard to keep their business model equitable and sustainable. However, it’s difficult for Catracha to compete with other buyers who generally pay less and only increase their payments when they need to fill their quota. With financial risk too high and knowing that farmers could make their margins by selling their cherries to middlemen, Catracha decided not to purchase any coffee this year. Unfortunately, this means this year’s offering of Maria Adela’s coffee will be the last we’ll have for a while. While experts do not foresee market prices returning to early 2024 prices anytime soon (if ever), Catracha hopes that the situation will be better next year and that they can resume operations.
using a mixture of manure, coffee pulp, and limestone, catracha coffee makes organic fertilizer for farmers to use.
Farmers should always have more than one option for selling their coffee and make the choice that best suits their needs. It’s understandable when farmers decide to sell their cherries to others who can pay more and require less work. However, this is often a short-term solution. If and when the market drops and farmers don’t maintain their farming and processing practices, they may find themselves trapped in a cycle of selling at lower prices until they can improve their processes again and produce high-quality coffee. It would be ideal for the market price to be higher so that farmers worldwide can earn a liveable wage, and that specialty producers can get higher premiums for their hard work. However, when prices increase too fast too soon, it becomes a race of who can make the most and save the most during this period of volatility, and several things happen. Over the next year or so, there will be less high-quality coffee available, lower-quality coffee will be at higher prices, and there will likely be a decrease of coffee consumption globally because it will be difficult for some to adjust quickly to the high prices.
portrait of maria adela by Nahún Rodríguez
At Andytown, we’re doing everything possible to maintain our coffee prices while staying committed to purchasing high-quality coffee from our partners. In previous years, we sold Adela’s coffee at a premium price so that we could support the Catracha Third Payment Initiative, where a portion of the sales we make from Adela’s coffee is sent back to Santa Elena and split evenly between Adela, a coffee picker’s fund, and an emergency medical fund for Catracha farmers. However, with the increase in prices, we’ve decided to opt out of Third Payment this year so that more of our customers can enjoy Adela’s 2024 harvest at a more affordable price–and this harvest is Adela’s best one yet! Her coffee is sweet and soothing, with notes of red grape and sweet plantain, and it has a delightful finish reminiscent of rich butter pecan.
We’re sad we won’t get to taste Adela’s 2025 harvest, but we’re glad we have her 2024 harvest to sip and savor. This coffee will go fast, and I hope you get a chance to enjoy it while it’s here!
