Coffee as Social Justice, sourced from Tierra Nueva Honduras

Tierra Nueva Farm Coffee

We are delighted to announce that Tierra Nueva is now partnering with Fidalgo Coffee Roasters to offer the new brand “Tierra Nueva Farm Coffee.” This single-origin, direct trade specialty coffee offers complex flavors, and provides fair wages and meaningful work to subsistence farmers in a rural Honduran mountain community in Central America’s most violent nation.

Tierra Nueva Farm seeks to address the root causes of migration by providing employment to 50-60 families to grow high-quality coffee, while at the same time announcing the Good News of the Kingdom of God to the Honduran poor. Tierra Nueva’s coffee is grown under a shade canopy home to a broad range of tropical birds. No herbicides or insecticides are used on this farm moving towards organic production.

Right now the future of Tierra Nueva’s coffee farm is threatened by low coffee prices due to overproduction in Brazil. In 2019, coffee prices plummeted to below $1.00 per pound. Farmers need closer to $2.50 per pound to cover their costs, and $3.50 per pound to make a livable income. TN pastor David reports that he personally knows over 20 coffee farmers from the Alta Mira region who headed to North America this year in the migrant caravan, desperate to make money to pay bank loans to save their coffee farms.

We can directly address global inequalities that drive migration by paying growers what coffee actually costs to produce. Tierra Nueva is partnering with Fidalgo Coffee Roasters to respond to this crisis by inviting you to contribute to Tierra Nueva Farm’s success—which will bless many people. This year’s 6,000 pounds of green beans are now in Burlington awaiting your online order so Fidalgo Coffee Roasters can roast it to perfection and ship it to your home.

OUR STORY:

In 2008 Tierra Nueva established its 14-acre coffee farm in the remote mountain village of Alta Mira at 4,760 feet in the rugged Honduran Department of Yoro. Alta Mira is a poor farming community of 300 or so families, who subsist off the land by growing corn, beans, coffee and working as day wage laborers. 100% of the income produced by the farm goes to the workers. See video of farm visit here.

Tierra Nueva’s coffee farm provides desperately-needed work to 50-60 families as pickers from November to April of every year. Three people operate Tierra Nueva’s wet mill and two oversee drying patios. 100-130 day wages are paid per year to manage weeds by machete or hoe. Youth between the ages of 12-18 help with the harvest during the end of school year break in December and January.

Our Farm manager David Calix (cowboy hat) regularly transports people free of charge up and down the mountain from the municipality of Victoria to Alta Mira and back. Tierra Nueva’s service includes transporting farmers produce to market and provisions back up the village, as well as bringing the sick or injured to the regional hospital. In addition the farm manager helps 5-8 people per year with cash advances so they can build houses or buy basic grains to store during times of scarcity.