Agriculture in Copan

January 19-26, my daughter Kate and I traveled to Copan Ruinas, Honduras to visit agriculture projects and teach.  We are working as a part of Baptist Rural Life Ministries and have been for 10 years.  We visited Chorti communities and toured fields to first see what some of the problems were and then we finished the week with training.

There are three major crops we are concentrating on; corn, coffee and cacao.  The Chorti mainly grow corn but as world coffee prices have increased they have steadily grown more and more coffee. 

Cacao, or as we know it, chocolate, is from the Americas but over the years has been replaced by other crops and the original knowledge about growing cocoa is gone. Africa is the world's largest producer now but Honduras has potential to grow and export cacao too. 

We are showing the Chorti how to grow cacao, varieties to plant, when to harvest and ferment cacoa and how to process seeds to sell. We have no plans to develop actual chocolate products but some individuals might!  

Right now Honduras is seeing a lot of land planted to Arabica coffees.  Arabica is the highest quality coffee type and so brings the highest prices.  Honduras grows only Arabica types and is know for producing superior coffees. We visit and work in the Copan area which is know for growing some of the best shade grown coffees in the world. 

Unfortunately the typical coffee varieties grown in Honduras are very susceptible to the disease, "La Roya." This is a rust type of fungus which kills the leaves, defoliates the plant and eventually kills it. In the picture you can see a coffee plant devastated by La Roya next to Kate.  This plant will die and be replaced by another.

Part of our work in Honduras with the Chorti is to teach them how to grow and process superior coffees and sell them for higher prices. In that we are evaluating disease resistant coffee trees with the hope that in the future our farmers won't be wiped out by diseases. We are reaching out to World Coffee Research at Texas A&M and to IHCAFE, the Honduran Coffee Growers Association. 

It is our hope to be able to introduce new varieties while we improve their production practices.  Still a long way to go!