STiR coffee and tea magazine

STiR coffee and tea 41 Tea expertise. Use that knowledge to your benefit. With our outstanding experience in tea buying and blend development, we offer you high-quality teas, sophisticated for- mulations and latest tea innovations. Independently. Personally. Since 1992. Get an impression of us: www.kktee.de Area 130,000 km 2 Population 6.8 million GDP $14 billion GDP/capita $2,040 GDP growth 10.3% Inflation 4.9% Unemployment 5.9% Exports $5.3 billion Employment in coffee value chain 350,000 Coffee farmers 45,000 Production in 2023/24 2.7 million bags, 60-kg Nicaragua at a Glance (2021 figures: World Bank, worlddata.info) Coffee is the nation's third-largest export by value, after gold and tee shirts, and the govern- ment aids the sector. In 2020, Nicaragua adopted a three-year national coffee strategy focused on im- proving farm management, farmer incomes, and response to climate change. The plan supports enhancing coffee genetics and exploration of new and different varieties. Another development effort is a push to plant robusta, which has long accounted for less than 5% of production. Some farms are working to cultivate premium robusta. Others use the hardy species to cope with extreme conditions. Finca Mierisch, for example, grafts a Geisha variety on top of sturdy and resilient robusta roots and stems, which helps the plant to withstand frequent strong winds. Plantations have expanded into new areas since 2013, when the government allowed coffee to be grown outside traditional coffee zones. The new farms are in the Pacific and Atlantic coastal areas, which have lower altitudes. They mostly produce commodity-grade beans for domestic consumption. EU Green Deal Specialty coffee is getting digital help. Farmer associations, cooperatives, and dry mills have recently begun investing in software that tracks the coffees they process. In the past, farmers had to combine their lots with other farms and varieties, losing their coffee's status as a single-estate lot, due to the large minimum lot size required by dry mills. By enabling single-farm or single-lot traceability from farmer to exporter, this technology has helped producers secure better prices. It could also help future-proof Nicaraguan coffee for compliance with a new regulation under the European Union's Green Deal. Announced in December last year, the new law imposes a strict mandate on traceability to ensure that coffee im- ported into the EU has not been grown on land deforested since 2020. "I don't believe traceability will be a big issue for us, nor specialty coffee producers in general, because traceability is the norm," Mierisch says. But only 5% of producers have certifications, according to the USDA, and the share has declined in recent years because fewer producers can cope with the cost and rising benchmarks. The 5% figure could be taken as a proxy for the size of specialty sector. That leaves lots of other producers, especially growers of commercial- grade beans. For them, and makers of blends, traceability will be difficult and expensive. "We are hesitant as to whether this is the right solution to this problem. Deforestation is an issue in Nicaragua, but it comes more from the timber and cattle industry than coffee," Mierisch says. But lower quality beans stay in the country and go through different pro- duction steps, usually becoming ground coffee blends or soluble coffee for domestic consumption. What's available in supermarkets and the small local shops known as pulperias are small packs of strong, dark-roasted coffee, a blend of arabica and robusta with caramelized sugar added. The Nicas like their coffee bold and sweet. Local consumers are very receptive and open to various processing meth- ods and roasting styles. But the majority still prefer medium or dark roasts of washed beans. Coffee first arrived in Nicaragua from Haiti in the late 18th century, dur- ing Spanish colonial days. Commercial cultivation took root in the 1850s after a bag of parchment coffee found its way from Costa Rica to the area around Jinotepe, south of the capital, Managua. By the 1870s, coffee became Nicara- gua's number 1 export, which it remained until the turbulent 1980s.

• Cover