Organic cultivation of coffee treasures from the hometown of giant turtles

Coffee from the home of the giant turtle. This coffee is of excellent quality and grown without any chemicals.

Coffee is grown in Saint Crstóbal. San Cristobal is one of the larger islands in the Galapagos Islands and the only island in the archipelago with sufficient fresh water. At an altitude of 410 metres, there is a small lake called El Junco, which forms streams along the rocks and volcanic rocks on the southern slope of the island. Fresh water rich in minerals nourishes the soil of San Cristobal, keeping it permanently moist and fertile.

In 1875, Ecuador's indigenous Mauel J. Cobos planted about 100 hectares of arabic bourbon coffee trees in the Hacienda El Cafetal in San Cristobal. The altitude of the plantation is between 140 and 275 meters, and the climate of the region is equivalent to that of 910-1830 meters inland. This gradient is very suitable for the growth of very hard coffee beans (SHB) with high acidity and is also the key to the quality of coffee.

As the world's coffee industry moves toward a mass-production model, San Cristobal's smaller and less reliable coffee industry is in trouble and may eventually be forced to give up without profit.

In the early 1990s, however, the Gonzalez family bought Hassenda Coffee Plantation. Local microclimates caused by the Humboldt Current, intense equatorial sunlight and sharp temperature variations (43 ° C at sea level and 10 - 16 ° C at 275 m above sea level) provided the unique favourable conditions that prompted the Gonzalez family to expand coffee plantations.

Since then, the area of the coffee plantation has doubled through the cultivation of early land. Because of the unique role played by the Galapagos Islands in the course of history, the Ecuadorian Government has designated the islands as a national park, no longer allows land to be reclaimed for new agricultural purposes, and prohibits the introduction and use of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and other chemical agents, so that coffee from the Galapagos Islands is recognized as a natural product.