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La Cooperativa Samac is a cooperative of 178 Smallholder Families.
15°47'12.642" N -90°44'97.475" W
GPS Location of Samac, Cobán, Alta Verapaz
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We’ve been in a relationship with La Cooperativa Samac since 2023. This is our 1st harvest buying from them!
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Samac’s history is vast. La Cooperativa Samac was established back in 1971
Forest Conservation & Coffee
Nestled away north of Cobán, Alta Verapaz, you’ll find a beautiful community of 178 families that have come together to form a cooperative with coffee and forest conservation at their core.
Background
Back in the late 1800s, German settlers were the first to inhabit this land with growing cardamom as part of their venture. Cardamom during this timeframe was almost more valuable than gold. Sadly, over the period of 50+ years, the German settlers had cut down much of the native forests making the land prone to flooding while negatively impacting the native environment and wildlife in the region.
As WWI & WWII came around, the Guatemalan government agreed to US policies to kick out all of their German residents. Around that same timeframe, local Guatemalans formed cooperatives as a way to earn rights to these governmental seized lands. Once La Cooperativa Samac were granted these lands in 1971, they began the process of restoring the land back to its original beauty.
Now that the cooperative has over 50 years behind their belt, it’s been amazing to see the growth they’ve achieved. Since then, they’ve built an entire wet mill to process their cherries into parchment, they’ve designed and built solar dryers to reduce their need for firewood to dry coffee while being quality-conscious, and lastly, they’ve recently just re-forested over 850 hectares of land in 2020 just to name a few.
La Cooperativa Samac has a really delicate balance and appreciation for both quality of coffee and doing so in a manner that’s honoring of their environment. The types of shade trees they utilize, composting methods, honey water recirculation systems, and how their coffees are dried are all done in a cognizant and intentional manner with the goal to lower their negative impact or to help preserve and grow the restoring native environment around them.
Where are they at now? Where are they going?
Local Roasting
We love asking these questions because it gives us some insight into their passions and even dreams for the future. La Cooperative Samac recently started roasting their own coffee and they’re developing a local market. (Not many Guatemalans are currently accustomed to drinking Specialty Coffees; which are often locally grown.) La Cooperativa Samac is excited to see this local business grow since it offers more local employment, better profit margins, and requires less transportation of coffee from point A to point B. They currently have three women, named Ernestina Sacarb, Augustia Pacay, and Maria Sacarb, that head up the roasting, packaging, and distribution of their coffee. They’re all gems of people and eager to learn more. As a part of our reinvestment funds, we hope to be able to support them with better machinery, cupping equipment, and spending more time on the cupping table with them in person.
Market Access
Coban is in an interesting region. Most coffee-growing regions are along the Central American volcanic range which spans from the highland areas of Chiapas, Mexico all the way to Panama along the southern/pacific coastlines. Coban is located far north of this volcanic mountain range and is somewhat secluded from other coffee-growing regions. Because of this, they often receive less buying interest from international markets. To our benefit, there are some great coffees being grown in this environment that are quite fertile for growing coffee like high elevations, plenty of rainfall, bio-diverse rainforests, stable soils less prone to erosion, and better plant nutrient uptake assuming plant health, harvesting, and processing are all done well.
Despite these various obstacles and needing to represent coffees from a more unknown region, they’ve actually been selling to a European client over the last few years. They’re excited to continue this relationship but they’re even more excited to be working with us since our model comes from a spirit of transparency, relationships, and collective growth. We’re excited to work alongside them to improve their variety of quality coffees and to help them find a better and more transparent supply chain/market access.
Our Remarks
After working in coffee for now almost 10 years, it never gets old getting to meet producers. They almost always find a way to impress us with their genuine and humble nature while displaying impressive achievements done with extremely laborious efforts and motivated by the desire to benefit their surrounding community. That’s La Cooperative Samac summed up in 1 sentence. It’s truly an honor to work with people genuinely inspired and motivated to bring about a change not just for their community but for their surrounding environment as well. They dream of the day to see their rainforests fully restored and coffee being a fueling source of those achievements. It simply leaves us speechless to play a small role in that.
Keep crushing it Samac!
To learn more, take a look at their available lots or reach out and send us a message!