Cafetal La Herradura - Mexico 2013

The property was purchased in 1964 and since the beginning all the cultivation practices where focused on sustainability. One of the most important practices was oriented to conserve and improve the soil fertility by managing the native herbs in order to use them as live soil coverage and by planting selected plants and trees that were able to create an agroforestry system with rapid growth timber that could be used as well as shadow for the coffee trees like Inga, Leucaena, Trema, Thorntree, Eritrina. Some of these trees had more than one purpose: as insecticides, as nitrogen fixers, and as vehicles for better usage of some nutrients trapped in the colloidal soil structure.

This agro biodiversity of trees, bushes and herbs species from the region introduced and adapted to the environment, are contributing to improve the physical, chemical and microbiological conditions of the soils, avoiding erosion, preserving the water cycle, capturing carbon dioxide.

Fortunately, Finca La Herradura is located on the periphery of an ecological park called El Haya and the protected area Francisco Javier Clavijero that functions as a center for education and research purposes. Both contribute to the richness of the area and the nature equilibrium, including pests control, for this reason, in our fincas we don’t need to use any insecticide. 

Being located at Coatepec, our sustainable production system and the care on the beneficio process, have allowed us to obtain several quality awards nationally and internationally. Winning Cup of Excellence 2013 confirms that all that work has been efficient; this recognizes the hard work we have been doing since 1964.

We want to continue with our work of share with other coffee growers our experiences and techniques by offering courses and trainings in our school-ranch.

The pride of doing our work well are giving us the hope that our descendants will keep working on coffee growing with the same PASSION and  oriented to specialty coffee industry.