The current situation in 2008

Today, there is a group of eight farmers and there is Santos Tuyúc. He is still a member of the cooperative Nuevos Horizontes but the current leader is David Mux Sotz. While Santos Tuyúc delivered a noteworthy amount of coffee to Norway in 2007, the other farmers sold their production directly from the plantation to customers in Antigua.

Since the smaller farmers could not use the machines that were purchased for all the farmers in the cooperative, the decision was made to give the rest of the money directly to the cooperative. This way, the smaller farmers could use it as a kind of micro credit to buy fertilizer. This solution became a success and according to some people, one could grow even more coffee if there were larger quantities of fertilizer.

In the beginning of 2008, the coffee cultivated by one of the smaller farmers, Miguel Mux, was tested excellent by the coffee expert Janove Torbjornsen from the twin city Stord in Norway. For this reason, he and the other small farmers should be encouraged to keep raising their coffee production.

In 2007, Santos Tuyúc exported 16 sacks, each 69 kilograms, to Stord and Oslo in Norway. In the beginning of 2008, he announced that his crop is too small to export. He made the experience that he did not earn enough from export last year but he thinks that this would improve if he could increase the production output.

In the year 2006, he already cultivated new coffee plants which he can harvest in 2009. By then, he expects a large crop for which he is hoping to find foreign purchasers. At the moment, Santos Tuyúc wishes to be able to invest more in new machines and tools for the fermentation of the coffee. He is the only one of the 25 members of the cooperative Nuevos Horizontes who has reached a relatively professional level as a coffee producer. That’s why you should encourage him to increase his coffee production since not only Janove Torbjornsen says that his coffee it is of highest quality.