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Tegucigalpa (Special digital processing/by Verónica Castro) – Benjamin Paz Munoz He has been surrounded by excellent coffee growing experts throughout his life, from his grandparents and parents to his friends in the coffee growing environment, which has led him to win the country’s highest award in coffee growing, the Cup of Excellence, twice in 2022 and 2024.
-For the winner of the Cup of Excellence, the secret to success is persistence, perfection and surrounding yourself with experts.
-Benjamín’s coffee is used by Singaporean chefs in world competitions.
The young coffee farmer from Santa Barbara shared some of his experiences in the world of coffee with Proceso Digital.
Benjamin’s life is surrounded by coffee and football, which are his two great passions; the first has allowed him to lift the Aromatic Cereals Excellence Award twice; the second, watching the Football World Cup brings him emotion and passion.
Third time is the charm
The saying “third time’s the charm” applies to this young coffee farmer. His grandfather started in the coffee world on a small farm but was more interested in commercialization, a tradition his father followed.
Years later, in addition to receiving two national awards for producing high-quality coffee beans, Benjamín also sold the beans for a record price of $136.50 per pound, equivalent to about 3,400 lempiras.
The youngest of four brothers, Benjamin spent his childhood between the classrooms of the Adventist Education Center in Peña Blanca, Cortes, where he attended elementary and secondary school, and the farm of his grandfather, the elder of the Paz family, in the world of aromatic grains.
His maternal grandparents were also involved in the world of coffee farming, which is why he is certain they laid the foundation for “sitting here today with my mouth full of delicious coffee.”
“Like any small family business, you grow and develop in these environments,” he said, remembering that his grandfather gave up the farm after not having success in coffee farming, a path his father repeated, so they both dedicated themselves to coffee marketing.
To date, those farms have been abandoned, according to Paz, who has purchased his own land elsewhere in Santa Barbara.
Benjamin’s love for coffee plantations continued throughout his college years, because even though he had to move to the industrial capital to prepare for his degree in business administration, he would always go to Santa Barbara on weekends. “Unless there was a national football team game.”
After graduating from university, “I had the opportunity to choose what I wanted to do and I decided to support the family group, so the idea of resuming coffee cultivation and starting over came up and I started working on the plantation, while we worked with the marketing department at the same time.”
Currently, Benjamin and his brother work together in the family coffee marketing business, while his sister is pursuing a career in medicine.
The young man also focuses on picking specialty coffees of the Geisha and SL-28 varieties.
Winners all around
After graduating from college, Benjamin became involved in coffee marketing, which allowed him to learn about specialty coffee and provide advice on how to capitalize on the coffee varieties grown in the country.
“We started giving advice and feedback to the producers who were supplying us with coffee, we started identifying qualities and attributes, and those producers started getting involved with Taza,” he recalls.
Benjamín said 2023 Cup of Excellence champion Edgardo Tinoco told him back in 2012 that a farm next to his, the one where he got his start in specialty coffee, was for sale.
Despite not achieving the expected results, the young coffee farmer persevered and realized that in addition to desire, discipline and hard work are essential to achieving success.
“Thanks to these mistakes and opportunities, I learned and a few years later, in 2018, another friend, Miguel Moreno, who is ranked tenth this year, told me about another field and that’s when I fell in love with cocoa. When Miguel told me that I loved that piece of land there, I already had money and I told him that I would forget about cocoa and we went there,” he said, noting that this is the farm that led him to another first place in the Cup of Excellence.
Winning Variety
The Geisha variety has kept him successful, but it is not the first harvest for the coffee grower, he said he started with Pacamara, Bourbon and Katuay because they were the winning varieties in 2005, 2008, 2010 and 2013.
Team success
For the coffee growers, successfully repeating the Cup of Excellence is the work of the team that works on the ground every day. “From the mill staff to the cutters, we are a team that services four farms, with about 40 people during the harvest season and about 10 people during the normal season.”
As for success, the goal is a combination of everything. “I feel the land the farm is on is very good, the altitude is also an important part, there is a small nature reserve next to the farm which I feel helps keep the temperature low, obviously the variety is great, and the key is the support of the workforce,” he concluded.
On the day of the 2024 award, Benjamin was carried on the shoulders of other coffee growers and some boys working on his farm, “They felt him and saw the results of their work,” he said with the same smile. He raised the trophy and even shed tears when he remembered the love his teammates showed him.
From Honduras to the World
Understanding the destination markets for his coffee allowed him to place his products in multiple countries.
“Thank God, because I have developed and grown my career representing coffee, many buyers told me ‘When you have your own coffee, I will buy it from you’”, so, “I have a market in Asia, in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and this year we started selling in Singapore and Malaysia.”
The young man said the Malaysian barista champion used his coffee at the World Barista Championship in South Korea.
The biggest market it has is the United States, “and the companies that buy my lots at auction are from the United States, where I have very strong relationships, obviously because of the proximity and because we have the opportunity to travel there and meet and work with them”.
Another coffee market for Pas is in Canada and European countries such as France, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Spain, Finland and Turkey.
“Our coffee is arriving in different places, where we continue to see other possibilities. This year we’re sending our first 66-pound sample to China to see what happens.”
With this success, Benjamin recognizes that it is the result of what his grandparents and father planted, “I believe that without the foresight of my grandfather, I believe that what I am doing today would not happen, and the same would be true for my father, who laid the foundation for us to have the facilities to conduct these businesses,” he said.
“I don’t think it will be the same, unfortunately I was too young to work with my grandfather, but I think my father obviously adopted his ideals and knew how to understand it, which is a little difficult for us to understand because when one grows up in another environment, you are a little distracted, and the streets, the stadiums, sometimes you are distracted, but when you mature and grow, you understand and we find our way,” he concluded. Venture Capital
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