Honduras - Maximiliano Hernandez Pacheco

Maximiliano is a coffee producer from Los Naranjos, Lempira. There were no schools available in his community when he was a child, so from around the age of ten years old he worked growing basic grains next to his father. He spent the rest of his childhood and teen years doing this, until at the age of twenty-four when he got married to María Molina.Two years later, Maximiliano started traveling to San Marcos de Ocotepeque during the coffee harvest seasons to work as day-laborer and learn everything about growing coffee. His father gave him a plot of land to grow corn, and right after the harvest he traded the corn, gathered some savings he had, and sold a horse to buy a 0.70 hectares land in the community of El Zanate. On this new land, Maximiliano planted around 1,500 coffee plants of the Red Paca and Ihcafé 90 varieties, and expanding his farm little by little over time. While working on this, he was also able to buy a house, which he paid for by growing and selling vegetables. Today, he has a property of 2.8 hectares of land with 1.4 hectares planted with coffee, all managed in an organic way that also provides jobs for his family members and for another 10 people during the harvest season.