Sustainable Coffee Farming: How Top Working is Shaping the Future of Coffee in Guatemala
Discover how regenerative coffee farming is transforming Guatemala’s coffee industry through TechnoServe’s CaféTec program. With sustainable techniques like Top Working, smallholder farmers can boost coffee yields, improve soil health, and strengthen resilience to climate change—all without disrupting production. Learn how these practices are helping Guatemala’s coffee sector thrive in the context of environmental challenges and economic pressures.
| What is regenerative Coffee farming? For TechnoServe this means enhancing soil health, biodiversity, and water resources while building economic prosperity and resilience to climate change. This model leverages sustainable practices- Like top working, cover cropping, intercropping, organic fertilization, smart irrigation, and many others – to improve the environment and support smallholder coffee farmers in achieving higher yields and better incomes. It’s a way to grow coffee that restores ecosystems and strengthens rural livelihoods. |
Introduction to Sustainable Coffee Farming
Very few beverages have a global hold on our daily lives quite like coffee. Recent data reveals that nearly 168 million 60-kilogram bags of coffee were consumed worldwide in 2023. To put that into perspective, if those bags were evenly distributed, each of the planet’s 8 billion people could enjoy over 130 cups of coffee per year. This statistic is just one way to see how coffee fuels mornings, conversations, and entire economies across the world.
Yet, coffee production is delicate and vulnerable to environmental shifts. Reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change paint a sobering picture: climate change is expected to reduce global yields and shrink coffee-suitable land by 2050. Take Guatemala, for instance—a country where economic and environmental challenges meet. In 2022, Guatemala exported $1.15 billion worth of coffee, yet production is projected to decline slightly by 2024-2025. Agriculture, a pillar of Guatemala’s economy, employs around a third of the population and contributes 10% to the nation’s GDP. Due to its position between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, Guatemala bears the brunt of tropical storms. At the same time, rising temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns have further reduced crop yields for smallholder farmers. To ensure long-term productivity and sustainability, the path forward requires practices that boost yields sustainably, especially for those most vulnerable to climate impacts.
What is Top Working in Coffee Farming?
Top Working, originally used to rejuvenate fruit trees, is a transformative agricultural technique that changes the variety of an established tree by grafting a different improved variety onto the existing rootstock. Widely practiced by smallholder coffee farmers in Kenya, this technique allows farmers to renew coffee trees without halting production, and the result is established coffee fields more resilient to diseases. Inspired by these successes, TechnoServe’s CaféTec program introduced Top Working to Guatemala, bringing its benefits to smallholder coffee farmers who need effective, resource-efficient methods for increasing productivity.
How Top Working Works: A Regenerative Solution for Coffee Farms
Traditional coffee field renewal requires uprooting old coffee trees, producing seedlings in a nursery, and establishing new plantations—a process that can take over three years. Top Working offers a new approach for 5,000 small Guatemalan producers in the CaféTec program to renew their fields without missing a harvest. By grafting new coffee varieties directly onto existing rootstock, Top Working bypasses the need for replanting and preserving deep-rooted coffee trees while saving time. Farmers can return their coffee trees to production faster, maintain drought resistance, and increase productivity in the long term.
Why Top Working Supports Sustainability
This innovative technique aligns with sustainable farming principles. It helps coffee farmers adapt to changing climate conditions and specific diseases while improving product quality in flavor, aroma, and cup profile. Farmers gain greater market access with more desirable varieties and see the potential for price increases.
- Ensures continuous coffee production without interruptions.
- Lowers renovation costs by eliminating the need to purchase new plants.
- Reduces labor costs related to establishing new plantations, like digging, layout, and planting.
- Shortens the time to harvest compared to traditional replanting methods.
The Broader Impact of Regenerative Agriculture in Guatemala
TechnoServe’s CaféTec project supports regenerative farming practices by operating 179 field schools that serve over 5,000 small producers. These schools, situated on small plots, are key sites for practical training and active farmer participation, where TechnoServe-hired trainers provide valuable technical knowledge and demonstrate progress. Farmers replicate the techniques on their own farms, while TechnoServe trainers make follow-up visits to offer specific recommendations for farm management improvements.
On over 80% of the land associated with the project, regenerative practices, including Top Working, are actively practiced. For many farmers, the benefits of this technique are clear:
“While the coffee plant has cherries on top, there is already a graft that is growing. We plan to implement it because we have plants that really need it,” said coffee farmers Elba Ucelo and Rudy Guzmán.
The Future of Sustainable Coffee Farming in Guatemala
For small farmers—and particularly for women—the adoption of Top Working brings transformative benefits. Due to male migration, labor is often scarce and expensive, and women managing farms must often hire outside help, despite limited financial resources. Top working offers these women a valuable tool to reduce production time and economic burden. As CaféTec manager Jose Paíz noted, “In just 20 days, farmers can see if the graft has taken, and by 90 days, the grafting tape can be removed.”
CaféTec has trained over 3,000 farmers, 39% of them women in Top Woking and other regenerative practices. An increase in adoption of Top Working is expected as time goes by and farmers become more comfortable implementing it.
Adopting regenerative coffee farming practices offers a tangible pathway to economic stability and resilience in the face of uncertainty. As more farmers adopt Top Working through the CaféTec project, Guatemala’s coffee sector takes an important step toward a future where productivity and sustainability grow hand in hand, securing the vitality of one of the nation’s most treasured exports.
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