The Producers
The couple responsible for producing coffee on Finca Primavera are Carlos Napoleon Mayo and his partner Ana Soledad Alverca Abad. Hailing from a coffee producing family and being involved from an early age, Carlos along with his 8 brothers are all coffee farmers. Finca Primavera was established in 2017 and has since sought to improve the quality of the coffee produced at the farm. Travelling to the farm from the nearest town of Palanda, in the south of the country, involves taking an unpaved road well up over 2,100 metres. 3 of the 4 hectares Carlos and Ana own are planted out with coffee, primarily Castillo and Typica Mejorado cultivars, which are shaded by a combination of Porotillo, Hormiguero and Guabo trees. Other trees on the farm can aid coffee plant health through nitrogen fixing and promote biodiversity on the land, and they implement a strict no logging policy at the farm, following an agro-forestry system, and safeguard their natural water sources.
Their Approach
Coffee production at Finca Primavera is a family endeavour. Carlos is typically managing the crop husbandry, fertilising and pruning the coffee trees as well as manually clearing weeds. Ana oversees the processes at the micro-beneficio or wet-mill, where the coffee fruit is processed into dried seeds. Once harvested the coffee cherries are initially floated to remove defective fruit and any foreign matter before depulping. This is done without water and the depulped, mucilage covered parchment seeds are subsequently floated again. They then spend between 24 and 48 hours fermenting in a sealed, anaerobic environment. The overall fermentation period is altered depending on the weather. Once fully washed the clean parchment is taken to covered raised beds to dry for between 12 and 20 days, again depending on the climate.
In the future Carlos and Ana hope to increase their farm by a further 5 hectares, dedicated to planting the Sidra cultivar, as well as improve the infrastructure of their processing equipment.
The Exporter
Caravela Coffee, with whom we have been lucky to travel with around Ecuador, are a Carbon Neutral B Corp with a boots-on-the-ground approach, employing a team of agronomists to run their PECA training program. This form of farmer outreach is extremely valuable, not just in raising the quality and quantity of a producer’s outturns through dispensing agronomical advice, but in predicting yields, planning and financial support. Ecuador boasts a negative carbon footprint for green coffee production, with -0.5kg carbon emitted per kilo of green produced, thanks in part to the native forestry maintained and protected on coffee farms acting as a carbon sink, as well as minimal use of fertilisers and agro-inputs. Caravela have been working in Ecuador since 2007 and now support a network of over 200 individual coffee farmers and families. Their main buying hub for the south is in Catamayo. After being cupped and graded, blended lots are composed and the parchment coffee is moved to Quito to be hulled and have the quality refined and homogenised at Caravela’s own dry mill.
