El Zopilote is one of our LIFT coffees from the Guinope area of Central Honduras. Owned by Roger Orlando Padilla Figueroa, El Zopilote is a small farm of less than 1.5 hectares and produces 29 quintales of coffee annually. El Paraiso is a small municipality within the state of Guinope, with a population of 15,000 people primarily involved in the cultivation of coffee.
The farm sits 1,350 meters above sea level, with an average temperature of 75 degrees F, and grows only the lempira variety. Lempira is a variety developed in Honduras and is a cross between Caturra and Timor Hybrid 832/1. It was designed for warm regions with acidic soils and produces high yields, though it is susceptible to leaf rust and Ojo de Gallo. However, the farmers participating in LIFT pay very close attention to the health of their plants and are proactively finding solutions to maintain quality and yield.
Roger Orlando Padilla grew potatoes until 2012 when a plague wiped out his harvest, and he switched to coffee. Because of the small farm size, he works primarily with his wife, Edis Zulema Fonseca, and other family members to manage the farm. They are incredibly remote. It takes two days to get to a town where he can sell his crop, and because of that, in his first season, he had no contact with exporters, selling his crop as cherry on the local market. In 2018 he received a visit from a LIFT agronomist and was included in the first LIFT cluster in the region.
As with all LIFT farmers in Honduras, the pickers at El Zopilote are taught only to pick the ripest cherries and pay particular attention to the natural processing of this coffee. Because of this, they have created exceptional coffee.
Download Finca Zopilote Natural “Roger Figueroa” ML LIFT Info Sheet
