Honduras Fairtrade Organic

This naturally-processed offering from Honduras through Trade Aid is a vibrant, full-fruit experience – pineapple and white-flesh nectarine lead the flavour charge with a nice cocoa balance helping out. Roasted for soft-brew methods this one is both for the coffee-head looking for bold, clean flavours and the new-to-brewing enthusiast looking to open their palate to specialty naturals. Fairtrade and Organic.

COMSA was founded in 2001 by 69 farmers who were seeking ways to make their coffee growing businesses profitable. At the time coffee in Honduras was largely grown in a conventional manner using chemical inputs to support production, volumes were large, quality and prices were low and most coffee went into the ‘commercial’ markets – farmers often could not cover the costs of production.

COMSA set out to encourage quality and organic, chemical free agriculture, and over time they have built their volumes and their quality and now the 1200 members produce specialty grade organic coffee and own their own warehouses and processing plant.

The group is very focused on social development as well as the agricultural; they have a primary school and run organic education courses for farmers from other parts of the country and region. In recent years, looking for new, quality focused markets the cooperative has developed a programme for the production of natural processed coffees – in 2019 when Trade Aid visited, they produced 14 full containers of natural coffee in response to demand (information provided by Trade Aid).