If you're a roaster, you've probably felt it. It's getting harder and harder to find great quality coffee at volumes and prices that still make sense. One origin that's often been overlooked in the search is Honduras. For years, it's been treated as a conventional origin, even though there are producers quietly growing exceptional coffees that never make it into the specialty conversation.
The Honduran Coffee Alliance is a social enterprise with a simple mission. Connect those producers and buyers in a fair, sustainable, and commercially viable way. They work with organized producer groups across regions like El Paraiso, La Paz, Olancho, and Comoyagua, helping them evaluate quality, tell their farm stories, and move coffees that belong on specialty menus, not buried in anonymous blends. What that looks like for roasters is previously untapped lots that heat your flavour and quality targets, a minimum of just four bags to get started, transparency reports so everyone can see where every cent of the purchase goes, and turning that first buy into a long-term trade relationship, not just a one-off.
If the idea of forming a long-term relationship with producers in Honduras is of interest to you, reach out to the Honduran Coffee Alliance so that they can work to find you a fit for your 2026 menu. Samples are going to be ready soon. You'll find Sean Warner's WhatsApp and email in the show notes, send him a message and tell him you heard about the Honduran Coffee Alliance here, and start exploring what these overlooked Honduran coffees could do for your menu today. Check the show notes for links.
Welcome to the Daily Coffee Pro by Mapper Ford Friends. I'm your host Lee Safar, and this is episode three of a wonderful five-part series with Brazilian coffee agronomist, Jonas Fierrer-Lestor. We have had Jonas on the podcast every year, pretty much since 2018. It is an absolute pleasure to have you back, yet another year that keeps getting more intense than the year before at Jonas.
In 2025, we thought surely nothing else can happen to make a coffee growing harder. And then 2026 showed up and said, watch this. So in this episode, guys, we are going to be looking at how our genetics, technology, the area that we cultivate coffee and irrigation affecting coffee production in Brazil. So Jonas, those are a lot of different elements of growing coffee that seem to be growing more and more in importance as we're talking about things over the years, as climate change becomes a very important part of creating problems for coffee production in the world and as it gets harder on how to grow arabica coffee.
What role are all of those things playing in production in Brazil? Every year, farmers have facing more challenges for growing coffee. In Brazil, we start to use more and more technology to give support to the farmers. When I say technology, say it's like genetics, fertilization techniques, types of fertilizers, other inputs to support coffee like biological insides or conventional insides, or more technology-based herb sites or fungicides, everything has a cost for farmers.
And since the prices are good for them, they start to use that technology in more large scale, which in certain ways was what keep coffee a good business in Brazil to invest on. But what worries me is everything that we have now need more money to support. So it's hard to think in the future that we saw the sea prices close to 100 cents as was for a long time, and farmers are willing to use all this technology and have these amazing yields for a long time. Like below 200 cents is already crazy to think coffee will be something that farmers will do and invest to make money.
So we have to put all this technology because of climate issues. Like I saw in the last two or I think two, three years, the irrigation coffee irrigated to grow a lot in all areas, not only in coniferous, but in arabica too. Coniferous already, we've used a lot of irrigation technology as I mentioned in the last episode because they need that to have outstanding yields. But arabica usually, they do not need a lot of irrigation in average, but we have like drops in periods that were very important for coffee.
So farmers start to invest in irrigation fields because they have the support of prices to do that. And this investment was justified by the price of the coffee. So more coffee, more money, so I could pay for the irrigation. I always like to bring that because irrigation is a controversial issue in growing stuff, but in terms of problems for general, let me say that irrigation is not a big issue.
When we think about the water, it's what we use because for instance, the plant using less than 2% of the water for itself to keep it. So when we irrigate the coffee or any crop, most of them, part of the water drain to low levels of the soil and go to the water, I forgot the word, the water. That's right. Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, exactly. Do you mean the water that is under the ground? Yeah, yeah. So when irrigates, part of the most of the water go to the aquifer, and part was perspirated and evaporated for the environment again.
So we use a lot of water, but not keep a lot of water. The issue is the amount of water that we need to be available for that and to use for that. So if we have like use a lot of water for irrigation in a short period of time, for a medium or short period of time, we have issues for water supply for other stuff, like people, cities, another thing. In some point, this water will come back again because the water do not disappear when we use agriculture.
But the issue really is the amount of water we should use. And if we use more water, and this water will be not available in short term for people, for animals or for other activities or for rivers, which would be a problem if I drain all the water from the river. In some point, the water will come back to the river, but the river will be a short, how can I say that? It will be smaller than it used to be.
So the animals on the water will not like that and everything that came from the chain. So when we think about irrigation, we have to think about responsible irrigation. We have to think a lot that why usually governments give that, at least in Brazil, this license to explore water for irrigation for all the irrigation crops that we have in Brazil. But it is a positive for agriculture if they use it in the right way and could make farmer, still growing stuff.
It's not easy to say, okay, you can't farmer, you can grow more in this land, you have to move it. It's not how it happens in the reality. Farmers live there, they need to find ways to grow coffee. About genetics, in the last 10 years we advanced a lot in genetics.
We have coffee that are more resistant to plagues than disease. That means less usage of pesticides in the fields, which is very good. Farmers are now planting these varieties, which usually they are kind of resistant to using new stuff in fields. But they are more willing to do in the last 10 years.
I saw fields with new varieties instead of using the old ones. We'd have better yields, but we still have, we have a new problem, which is these new varieties needed more inputs to survive because more if more fertilizers, more risks. So when we have some kind of prices, we have to think about if the farmer will have ways to deal with this right, some farmers can't. That's why I saw some farmers that planted new varieties after four or five years, they take it out and put the old ones.
Because the level of technology is bigger than the traditional ones. They need more support, more stuff, and this could be a problem when we talk about climate issues. So varieties usually with more yields need more water. They are less resistant to drought because they kind of grow faster, they blossom a lot.
So it's usually complicated to find the perfect balance. What is the best way to make profits in coffee? If I use traditional varieties, I have low yields. So to harvest, for instance, 60 bags of coffee, I need two actors.
If I need to use a new variety, I need one actor only to take care of. So it's profitable to work with old varieties in one actor. I don't know, maybe for your farm model could be. But usually, in my opinion, using new technology, even with all these risks, it's better because in a smaller area, you could make a good amount of money for your living in your areas around.
You could, how can I say, let for nature. I do not use an area from a natural forestry if I could have enough of money in a small area. So it's advantageous in its issues. But it's a very important role in Brazil to keep coffee in high levels that we have, even not expanding the area of production.
So when you say that with the high yield in the small areas, that's because we want to protect, we want to stop deforestation. So if we need larger areas, we have to cut down more trees. Is that correct? Okay.
Great. So I get that now. There are some spots only. We have some coffee.
It's not a huge issue as we have in other crops. Because most of the areas, at least when I visit areas, they start to using pasture areas for coffee growing. Because we already, these pasture areas used to be forests like 50 years ago, 60 years ago. So farmers along these years suppress internet pasture.
Now I saw more coffee going into this pasture area that before was forest. At least immunogenizing Sao Paulo is what I saw. You know, we keep talking about this idea that Arabica is going to continue to be stressed as a future of Arabica is limited. If we keep looking at things the way that they are, the future of Arabica is limited.
Do you think that genetics and other technology is making this easier? Will it extend the life of Arabica long-term? Do you think that that's a possibility? Yes, the only issue is sadly it's not fast enough to deal with all these climate issues that we are having.
We already have some varieties in Brazil that are more resistant to drought, but less than for the total varieties that we have. And we have another areas of studies to study like plagues, diseases and everything in yields, which is important, as I always said. So it's not fast enough for the change. It's kind of right that is resistant to drought in the same chance.
So it will be very complicated. Whatever else the climate is going to give us. Yeah. Right.
And will water continue to become a problem, do you think? Or is that dependent on what the weather is going to do? Like if it's going to get really cold and with frost stories are going to get really hot. Like at this point, do you think that Brazil has the water stored?
Whether it's in aquifers and guys for those who don't know what an aquifer is, it's the water that's stored underneath the ground. Basically there's big resources of water in different countries that are stored under the ground. And they top up, for example, like what Jonas was saying, if an aquifer sits under the ground under agricultural land and you keep watering that land, sometimes that water, not 100% of it, but whatever doesn't get used, it eventually filters through the soil and goes back down into an aquifer if it's there. And it tops it up.
It can top it up. Right. So, but there is a big concern from what I understand Jonas, that with the amount of water that's being used for agriculture, that we could end up draining those aquifers dry. Is water still a concern for the future?
Yeah. The problem is if everything wants to use irrigation, how we will deal with that and what standards we're going to use for that. So, everyone, we will use all the water they want. All they will only be allowed to use as much as they need to have some yields.
And it's hard to say if we're going to create some standards for that. I hope in the future there is no way we should create that standards because agriculture is like any other business is about maximize profit. But we have to make some standards in order to find some balance. That is why we are thinking always in other strategies to help coffee, to survive to these harsh conditions.
Light generative, growing agroforest, keep high amounts of organic matter in the soil, intercropping. We have to find new strategies. As genetics do not run as fast wheat. So, I don't know if the future we have some kind of something that makes the genetics more faster to do that, like with the CRISPR technology.
We don't know where we will lead that. But it's very complicated with perennial crops, with the results in the long term for research. It starts to evaluate yields or adaptation in one season for coffee, for instance. That, I think even with this high genetic technology, it still will take at least a decade to have a very established variety with good yields and accepted by farmers.
It took like 20, 30 years to read a new variety. Now it's a red order because of technology genetics that we could evaluate some stuff in coffee, like resistance to some stuff that we could be genetic tests pulling on fields. So, we could do some analysis in advance. But it still takes at least three, four, three, not at least six to seven years to collect data, to see if the variety is adapted to that condition.
So, even if we make the genetics, breed, I think breed or breading. Yeah, breed, breed shorter. We still need a few time to do all this need to be done. And that's assuming that the price that we're paying farmers is still worth it to them to keep coffee farming, right?
Yeah, even if the price continues to go down. Yeah, there's a different situation than it will be very complicated to keep it. Some stuff is not about only the price they paid, but we have worldwide for agriculture, a short purchase of hand or two. So, it's not about how much I pay, but people that are available to work.
So, if the prices are good, they still have a challenge. If they not still, if they drop, then we have a huge charge. Yeah, wow. Which of these leads us perfectly into our next episode where we're going to talk about sustainability, regenerative agriculture, agroforestry, all of these kind of movements that are happening in Brazil and why certifications are not the answer to anything.
So, join us for the fourth episode of this series. This is something I'm very passionate about. So, join us for the fourth episode of this series, folks. Peace, love and peanut butter, have an amazing rest of your day.
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