Coffee Castor FHI

Javier Jimenez Lasso, is originally from the Department of Tolima, Colombia. He is the eldest of a family of 5 siblings, grew up surrounded by coffee plantations and immersed in the coffee field. He learned from his father everything related to coffee production. In 1997 Javier arrived in the Coffee region of Huila to work as a coffee picker, and decided to stay in the district of Garzón and have his own coffee farm there. Javier worked approximately 20 years to be able to buy his Farm, thanks to all the years of work and all the effort together with his wife and children he achieved his goal and was able to fulfill his dream: to have his own coffee farm and produce quality coffee. In 2018, he purchased the Farm la Esmeralda, located in the Pan de Azúcar trail. Javier decided to buy this Farm because of the conditions it offered: its soil, location, topography, and production and he liked it very much and saw the potential he could obtain from it. Currently the Farm La Esmeralda is cultivating Coffee of the varieties Colombia, Caturra and Supremo. In La Esmeralda coffee had always been processed in the traditional way, until mid 2020 and 2021, when Javier’s eldest son, who is an Agricultural Engineer, proposed to his father to allow him to carry out tests and studies with different methods and techniques of coffee processing, and thus be able to create an ideal processing protocol that would adapt to the conditions for the coffee of the Farm, in order to be able to give an added value to the final beverage. In addition to coffee growing, Javier has always liked to be a social leader, he is currently the president of the Junta de Acción Comunal of the village, he manages projects and aids for development and social welfare. Javier is a proud Coffee Producer from Huila, together with his wife Leida Roció and their seven children, they form a beautiful family. Javier’s objective is to continue with coffee growing, to be able to buy more land and make the Farm bigger. He wants to finish giving his children an education, improve the infrastructure of the coffee mill and the coffee drying process in order to be more efficient, producing a sustainable and environmentally friendly coffee production, producing the best coffees in the region.