If you would like to read about the estates history and farming practices please see our article titled “The Generals Cup: History, Heritage and Farming Practices” here.
We are a company that is truly one of a kind, being that we are the estate. Operating internationally we sell our own productions in both green and roasted coffee markets. Our estate and milling facility is in Nicaragua, Central America, and our roasting and packaging facility is in BC, Canada, North America.
Historically most coffee farms sell to brokers at around 75 cents to about $1.75 per pound fully dried and milled. It is in the financial benefit of the brokers to get the prices down as low as possible and harvested fast.
This unfortunately leads to low quality, water wasteful, overly industrialized, unethical commercial farms taking over. It leaves the old heritage farms fighting to keep their traditional and natural methods of quality coffee productions alive.
These legacy coffee farmers cannot compete with the rock bottom prices offered for greens. Especially when trying to maintain ethical and environmental methods not economically sustainable when competing with clear cut flat row, machine harvested, pool washed greens.
Once brokers import they sell to smaller distributors who then sell to warehouses or roasters at around $2.50 for low end quality to about $7.50 for high end quality and rare coffee can even reach upwards of $15 per pound green.
The coffee roasters will then sell to cafes or retailers at about $7 to $27 a pound or more, who then sell to coffee consumers either by cup or retail bag adding their own profit margins again.
The farmer takes on the majority of the labor, time, liability and costs barely covering their costs if not at all, but makes by far the least profit in the supply chain. They also remain entirely invisible by the commercial markets perpetuating some of these unfair disadvantages.
Some roastaries are calling themselves 'direct from farm' attempting to develop connections with farmers as it benefits them massively financially and in appearance.
These roasters are acquiring marketing images and titles of 'farm direct' by a quick visit and deals made with farms to boost the ethical and authentic appearance of their brand.
We are not against this, but they are not the farm. They do not participate in the farming, harvesting, milling or processing of the coffee nor is the history, language and culture understood. Finally the massive financial burden of a farmer is not considered nor compensated fairly still.
In our personal journey to becoming a direct to consumer estate, we did attempt to connect directly with roasters, only to find they wanted to inherit the entire history and story of our estate, retain the rock bottom cheap prices for greens and leave our families legacy and our name out of it.
Ultimately they wanted our 139 year history for free. It was a stark reality check for us when we first tried to engage in the market ourselves.
But the positive was that it drove us even more to push through to the market ourselves and do what had never been done before. Every local coffee farmer we knew was rooting us on, praying for us, just to see one of us farmers make it.
Often those in the industry who transform the coffee into a consumable product, from green beans to roasted, will benefit the most financially, that is coffee roasters.
When the common farmer is getting an average of $1.10 a pound, just to barely break even while conducting most all of the work and costs including debt for harvest operations, and a roaster is making on average $19.39 a pound just merely roasting and packaging the coffee, clearly something is off.
Thus explaining the over saturated coffee roaster brand market. There are a variety of reasons for this, some political such as free trade laws as well as language and cultural barriers.
Perhaps we will give a more in depth take on this in the future.
Due to this typical model of trade many traditional coffee farms bankrupted and industrialized farms took over clear cutting jungles, killing wild habitat and producing very cheap fast to market washed coffee types.
Part of this loss of coffee farming heritage is the wisdom of production and transportation because the control over the product is no longer in the farmers hands.
Please read more about why we don't believe in blending high quality coffee types in our article "Parasitic Politics: The Invisible Coffee Estate" here.
Blending specialty beans is one example, but another more unseen example would be the current industry standard of using plastic bags inside of the jute or burlap sacks that most all wholesale green coffee comes in now.
Jute sacks were not a superficial design choice to make coffee sacks look rugged, authentic and natural. They had an actual real purpose. There was a wisdom behind it. Plastic is not good for green coffee in need of breathing as it seals in the moisture.
These jute sacks were originally used because it aided in the drying and breathing of the product while in transport. Using a non-breathable plastic bag inside a jute sack is, to us, nonsensical.
Today 99% of all green coffee comes this way. If you are a huge proponent of using plastic then even choosing one or the other makes more sense than using both the plastic and then jute on top.
Jute had a purpose, farmers still know this. Yet they must pay the extra cost of adding this plastic just to please the current market. It is unfortunate that jute is only used now for mere superficial appearance, rather than as breathable mold and moisture lock prevention. For us, it is a debate worth having.
Mold has become a real issue in the current green market. Thankfully we have full control over our greens, not using this plastic interior. Using jute sacks alone we have never seen mold on our greens after ocean shipments or storage. In fact we've seen reduction in moisture which is what you want.
Yes maybe you have to keep your greens in a clean, smell free, dry environment for storage and shipping, but that responsibility of care by the purchaser is not a reason to jump into plastic packaging and additional burden and cost to the farmer.
Not to mention the massive amount of single use plastic and the absorption of that plastic into highly absorbing green beans adding yet another unnecessary and unethical profiteer to the long list in the coffee supply chain. Also adding more plastic garbage burden to third world countries already having a hard time dealing with plastics.
There were so many reasons why we decided it was time to bypass this entire system and go directly to the markets ourselves as a heritage estate farm. These examples are just a small sampling to give you an idea of our many motivations.
By becoming direct to market we can truly hold on to a fully and totally natural process of production, use the collective wisdom over the 139 years of production and records keeping of our estate and truly bring something of great specialty and value to the overly saturated, but very diluted blended uniformed market.
This bold move made us one of a kind in our industry. We cannot find another company like ours that spans from the production all the way to the roasted consumable product reliably delivered in the mass quantities that we are equipped irregardless of the quality category of which we rank very high.
Establishing full control over every aspect of production, we acquired ownership of major equipment and facilities required for both milling and roasting. In 2020 new clients had seen up to 70% decline in their ability to source coffee from international brokers prior to finding us, while their prices increased significantly.
With major coffee roasting brands making a large fortune while farms go bankrupt, irregardless of the unethical economics, is not sustainable environmentally at all not to mention the quality of coffee making it to market.
Even small farms need basic income to maintain the land or industrialized mass producers will inevitably take completely over.
These industrialized farms, Organic and Fair Trade certified or not, are not good for the struggling or bankrupting farmer nor the consumer wanting a healthier more enjoyable, ethical product.
The great irony is if the farmers could sell direct to consumer both would benefit as one would make better incomes and thus continue producing traditional coffee and the other would pay lower prices for better quality.
Supply challenges to the international market created a perfect time for our entrance independently as direct-to-client producers. With stable prices and measurably reliable coffee production.
Uniquely able to maintain stable farm direct prices during periods of inflation as we are entirely in control of our own production and sales our clients find reliable, consistent product that never runs out and never changes price.
Further, clients are welcome and encouraged to visit the estate and spend time learning the behind the scenes operations and history of our farm.
The independently positioned public entrance of our once private estate into the international market appears to have been very well timed and needed.
We are so pleased to be able to offer our coffee directly to you honestly and transparently.
After all these generations of our family, and the massive collection of wisdom and traditions over decades of trial and error, we can surely say that when you purchase coffee from us, you are getting something very unique, reliable and specialized that has been cherished and cared for every step of the way.
For that support and interest in us, we thank you so much for helping to keep heritage coffee farming alive.
It is because of your support that other farms will be able to start carving their own paths into the direct to consumer market and stabilize their futures for generations to come.
Thank you for your interest in us and God Bless you.
]]>It’s 1880, our great great grandparents travelled from Spain to New York to Nicaragua. Now standing on the peak of a volcanic mountain in a thick hot tiger filled jungle in the heart of Central America.
They look out at the vast 4653 acres they just purchased imagining to build one of the largest coffee estates in all of the Americas right before the first global coffee boom.
With their two sons and a massive crew they spent the next 5 years planting 1100 acres of high elevation premium coffee, supporting shade trees and infrastructure while also building their large estate still standing today.
By 1897 they signed a futures contract promising 9 secured years of the estates full coffee production with Ritter’s Chocolates in Germany. That was truly the beginning of the estate.
A large ship anchor still lies on the farm today, once taken up to this extremely high elevation by only horse and carriage from the ocean. A gift from our great great grandfather to his wife as a testament of their strength together, it is inscribed “you are my anchor”.
We share this because strong family unity and loyalty to long term relationships is a founding principal of our success and resilience over the years.
Deeply inspired by this immense legacy, 5 generations have powered forward against all odds over the last 139 years. We purposefully strive to build just as boldly and undeterred for the future life, spirit and glory of our ancestors vision that we hold until the next hands take it.
One of our grandfathers, an inheritor of the estate, the commercial business is named after ‘The Generals Cup’.
Still alive today at the age of 99, a military general who led the country through two civil wars against communism and with the particular actions of his wife miraculously protected the coffee estate.
Due to this particular grandfather ‘The General’ and his honorable services to the peoples of Nicaragua, our family holds a special National status of “National Historical Importance”.
The historical ownership of our estate was also awarded by the highest supreme courts of the Nation and acquired a “National Historical Protection of Ownership”.
Throughout our history, again and again coffee stood the test of time unlike any other commodity or product.
Surviving unfathomable hardships our sales of coffee is historically unscathed proving itself to be a stable powerhouse during periods of great economic and political strife, undefeated and unshakable we refer to coffee as our gold.
Naming the commercial business after ‘The Generals’ legacy
intended to honor him while still alive, also paying homage to the importance that he placed on discipline, tenacity, strict regimens of conduct, loyalty, morality and arming oneself with knowledge.
Above all the imperative importance of peace keeping with those we disagree with, avoiding war at all costs.
There was a particular impressive quality of dignified boldness and courage to push forward into the unknown in all aspects of life.
Naming the company after him was a personal declaration of the high standards we aim to uphold. The current owner, the grandson of the general, was entirely raised and trained by this grandfather and grandmother and thus felt particularly drawn to honor them.
They both take the first cup of coffee in the morning very seriously.
Thus the company name is The Generals Cup.
The Farming, Harvesting and Milling Of Our Coffee
Our multiple award winning coffee beans are harvested and dried in a very
different manner than most all on the market today acquiring a specialty category rating with the highest cupping scores beans can achieve.
The coffee ‘grapes’ are picked by hand once fully red. Unlike
Industrial farms that pick using machines collecting unripe with ripe.
These ‘wet sacks’ are spilled out onto large cloths in the sun to ‘cook’. The grapes are then wrapped up and sealed to bake in the heat and then spread out to air dry in the sun. This process is repeated multiple times a day over a period of many weeks until fully dried.
This long process allows the fruit flesh natural sweet honeys to soak into the inner beans and results in top ranking coffee by global standards. Washed industrial coffee rarely ranks in top categories.
Once dried the grapes are then milled without any water. Industrial farming uses massive water pools to wash the fruit flesh off the bean immediately after picking to get the beans to market as quickly and cheaply as possible.
Our beans are also certified “Strictly High Grown” increasing quality category by very high elevations. Finally Nicaraguan coffee is commonly known to be more rare and known generally to produce some of the highest quality natural coffee in the world.
The main estate is the heritage farm with pristine wild habitat and full infrastructure for coffee growth and mature coffee plants.
We have a very significant annual production and we are considered to have a very large production yield. The original milling infrastructure is still on the farm and operational today.
This farm is considered one of the last large non-industrial coffee farms left in all the Americas. We also employ all of the communities around us and are very involved in charities and donations in the area including the construction of an orphanage, a village as well as land donations.
This farm is located on the peak of a volcano known as Mombacho. It is a certified Heritage Estate, is a protected wildlife sanctuary, home to several endangered species including two birds thought to be previously extinct and was recently awarded “Model Coffee Farm of Nicaragua.”
Industrial coffee farms typically clear cut jungle and plant full sun rows of coffee to machine harvest.
We have fully integrated the coffee plants into the wildlife habitat and it increases our quality while protecting the soil and species involved. All of the watering is from clouds because of the elevation.
Thousands of the original shade trees planted in 1885 are mostly all standing massive and tall today some taller than mid-rise apartment buildings and more than 10' in diameter.
They are on their own very remarkable and we cherish and protect them as they are home to many exotic creatures and sub-vegetative species such as dragon fruits which grow on the trunks.
The volcanic soil is naturally very rich so we don’t require fertilizers nor do we use pesticides as the farm is fully organic and always has been.
Other significant plantations integrated into the coffee trees include limes, mandarins, avocados, mangoes, bananas, papayas, coca and a large fully certified mature teak plantation.
See all of our certifications on the about page and contact us directly if you are interested in produce or teak sales.
By becoming direct to market we can truly hold to a fully and totally natural process of production, use the collective wisdom over the 139 years of production and records keeping of our estate. Thus bring something of great specialty and value to the overly saturated, but very diluted, blended market.
This bold move into the direct market made us one of a kind in our industry. We cannot find another company like ours that spans from the production all the way to the roasted consumable product reliably delivered in the mass quantities that we are equipped irregardless of the quality category of which we rank very high.
If you would like more insight into why we roast and sell our own coffee production directly to the consumer market from our farm, please read our article “Farm to Cup: Why We Roast and Sell Our Own Coffee Production” here.
We thank you for your interest in our methods of farming and our history and we hope this gives you some general sense of who we are behind the scenes.
Thank you and God bless.
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When amateur roasters acquire specialized beans they often ruin them. Blending unique coffees from around the world together to create what they deem superior. Falsely assuming positive characteristics are accumulative through mere combination.
Compare to the wine industry. Imagine a bottling company taking an award winning heritage winery and mixing their best wine with a variety of different house wines from completely different global regions.
You would not take a bottle of Bordeaux, fill it with a cheap wine and brand it as a superior ‘blend’. Further, attesting it is an improvement to a full bottle of Bordeaux whilst charging more because you have ‘added to it’. This is what most consumers are getting in the specialty coffee market today.
As a fifth generation estate growing strictly high grown specialized micro-climate heritage coffee for over 135 years, we have sadly had professionals less than a decade in their industry lecture us on the superiority of blends never having tried truly high end beans.
We have had people unaware that coffee comes from a red fruit grape proudly correct us on what makes a quality coffee bean. Little to say there is unfortunately a lot of top down arrogance within our industry and a gravely incorrect attitude that baristas and roasters are where the heart of coffee culture resides.
This is a desperate reflection of how disconnected and unappreciative the coffee industry truly is to the people, cultures, history and places that it relies on to exist. It is no wonder that what is left of heritage coffee farming is dying at an alarming rate. The irony is that coffee in and of itself is so beautifully simple, and yet the industry turns it into such a chaos reflected in the blends it produces.
Most coffee connoisseurs, the high end consumer market, have never tried nor heard of single sourced beans. Sadly blends and premixed brokerage beans are the best a self-proclaimed coffee lover has awareness of or access to. People who want quality coffee deserve better than mere fair trade or organic certifications.
The true value, effort and rarity of a specialized bean is lost on the abusive privileged over-saturated parasitic side of this industry. Heritage estates are hanging on by a financial thread surrounded by ruthless brokers. They roam communal mountains trying to catch farms in a moment of economical weakness.
For every $4-6 cup of coffee only a mere penny goes to the farm. Traditional coffee estates have long collapsed and only few remain leaving mass industrial operations to thrive. Still consumers are not aware that they could buy direct. Roasters, cafes and brokers make the profit majority butchering specialized beans by blending for better profit.
Self-appointed industry gatekeepers fashioned with trendy intellectual garb and egos. Wealthy cut throat brokers, career baristas, trendy roasters and graphically rugged ethically branded coffee companies have overly fetishized and saturated the cup. They make the simplicity of coffee unnecessarily complex.
In an industry that deals with the second most valuable legal commodity in the world lesser only to oil, it is no surprise the market is saturated with primarily ideological and economically oriented participants. It needs a full blown overhaul. Too many profiteers not enough appreciation, respect or credit where it is due, and it is overdue.
This could explain the snobbery and misguided sense of importance. If international free trade laws allowed farmers to roast and export their own beans, like wineries, most of these personalities would be immediately out of business. In turn coffee would be significantly less expensive, better quality and independent small farmers would cease to face extinction. In turn leaving the legitimately skilled roasters and baristas to rightfully claim and own their end of the market.
Generic and low effort brands are making impossible claims that somehow their method of roasting or blending beans is superior. Nearly anyone can buy a roaster making green beans brown. Or put roasted beans into an espresso machine. Very few could take on the risk, liability and backbreaking discipline to successfully grow, harvest, ferment and dry coffee.
Not to mention most roasters are buying all their beans from the exact same brokers and all are blending them together into a muddled, muted, melded mess of mediocre coffee.
You can turn good beans bad but not bad beans good. Either you maintain quality or you never had it to begin with, but never ever are you the one who creates it.
That credit belongs to the invisible farmer.
The truth is that it is time to be brutally honest with consumers. Independent coffee estates are disappearing and being replaced by massive automated machine operated corporate farms. The parasitic treatment of humble coffee farms by foreign brokers and all has gone on so long that it is resulting in the death of traditional, truly ethical, environmentally respectful quality coffee. There have been some efforts made over the years but they are unfortunately not enough and often superficially applied.
It is time for the coffee consumer to consciously decide if they want the quality of their cup to be determined by machine or man, by frother or farmer.
With 500 billion cups consumed per year, this is a bigger decision than one may anticipate. This tiny bean has been the center of world changing conversation for hundreds of years. Shaping cultures and places, coffee has inspired some of the greatest literary and political efforts in recorded history. This is by no means a small thing or influence.
So to all the self-proclaimed ‘coffee snobs’ a serious question is posed:
Will the industry that relies on farmers to exist recognize and compensate them fairly or should you, the consumer of high standards who loves and appreciates a good cup, start taking things into your own hands – starting with whom you purchase coffee from?
As the farming industry is without public witness, this transformation from independent farm to mass industry is fast moving. As one of the first farms to attempt to enter into the direct to consumer market online, we hope to pave a way for others to survive and hopefully thrive via adaptation and education.
The ultimate goal is for we the coffee farmers to find you, the coffee lovers. If we could accomplish that, we could change the industry and pave a way for a far brighter future for coffee estates just like ours, at The Generals Cup.
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