Traveling in Guatemala Part II: Heading up to El Paternal farm.

On Wednesday, we headed up to La Mesilla town on the North West side of Guatemala, close to the border with Mexico. The trip was quite long due to construction work on the highway. We had the opportunity to stop close to the Atitlan Lake to watch the beautiful landscape. We also passed through towns such as Antigua, Quetzaltenango, and Totonicapán, among others. One of the problems that we faced during this land trip was a constant traffic jam at each repair point. It is unbelievable how public and private transportation drove into double lanes just to progress a few inches, causing tremendous traffic jams. However, this was a nice opportunity to spend some time in the road getting in touch with locals and their culture. We had the chance to try all of the native foods and view some nice indigenous costumes.

We finally reached la Mesilla town, where Miguelina and her family where waiting for us with a wonderful welcome dinner.

The next day we head up to El Paternal farm around 20 minutes away from this town to hold a meeting with Mr. Cruz and Mr. Delmar, the Anacafe’s employees that are in charge of providing technical assistance and research work, respectively, in this region. The manager of the farm was also present, as well as Dani, Miguelina’s son who is actually in charge of managing the Paternal infrastructure maintenance.

It was both ways an enriching experience because we had the opportunity to share knowledge and expertise during all day. Ms. Ujwala and Michael from Micnelf Inc. could see that this farm had a potential to improve its fertilization process. From my perspective, the quality of the coffee is good but could also improve. We also had the chance to walk into the coffee plantation to diagnose the cultivated area in terms of fertilization needs. It was amazing to learn how color and texture of leafs in specific parts of the coffee plant could indicate how well nourished and treated a tree was. In addition, we also located the right spots to set up the micronutrient experiment.

After a long day of exchanging information, we came up with a three-year fertilization program plan, allowing us to gradually increase the production volume as well as the quality of the coffee produced on this farm.

In the first phase of this project, we should expect a higher foliar density of each trial spot compare with the normal cultivated area that would not receive any treatment. After this initial phase a soil fertilizing application would eventually work better in a more healthy system tree.

We learned a lot about the potential outcome of this program. We hope that in the short term it could be implemented as a cost effective plan for the entire farm.










Ms. Ujwala explaining trial details to Ms. Miguelina.










From right to left. Mr. Cruz, Mr. Delmar. Ms. Ujwala. Ms. Miguelina. Information and experiences exchange meeting.


Final instructions related to micro nutrient sprays procedure before leaving.