Honduras

Why this origin matters

Honduras is the largest coffee producer in Central America on the USDA's figures and, on its attaché's account in 2025, the eighth-largest coffee exporter in the world. It grows only arabica, and nearly all of its registered growers are small: about 87,000 of roughly 92,000 in the 2023/24 season, who between them grew a little over half the crop. What the attaché's report documents most fully is how much of the coffee now leaves the country under a certification or a quality programme. The 2025 report puts that share at 42 per cent of exports in the 2018/19 season. For 2023/24 it printed 52 per cent in one table and 55 or 56 in its text and in another; the 2026 edition settles on 56 per cent for 2023/24 and gives 52 per cent for 2024/25. Its preliminary figure for the part of the 2025/26 season shipped by April 2026 is 37 per cent, which it says may reflect the timing of shipments as much as a change.

Where coffee grows

Coffee is grown in 15 of the country's 18 departments and 210 of its 298 municipalities. The coffee institute organises production into six named regions — Copán, Montecillos, Opalaca, Comayagua, El Paraíso and Agalta — each defined by its climate and soils and used for quality control and marketing. The west of the country also trades under a collective regional brand, and Marcala holds the country's first protected designation of origin, granted in 2005. The farms are overwhelmingly small: of roughly 92,000 producers registered in the 2023/24 season, about 87,000 were classed as small, and between them they harvested more than two thirds of the coffee land.

The six regions lie between about 1,000 and 1,600 metres above sea level, and 61 per cent of farms are between roughly 1,200 and 1,600 metres. Altitude is written into the grading system: more than half of the coffee exported in 2023/24 was classed as strictly high grown.

Species and varieties

Arabica only. The attaché's report names Bourbon, Catuai, Caturra and Typica as varieties grown in the six regions; the World Coffee Research catalogue rates all four as susceptible to leaf rust. The current expansion in planted area is being driven by Parainema, a rust-resistant cultivar, and the coffee institute's renovation programme is aimed at replacing ageing trees without interrupting production.

Harvest

The marketing year runs from October. By April of the 2024/25 season about three per cent of the crop was still unpicked. CoffeeHQ does not give harvest months by region, because the report read for this page does not.

How the coffee is processed

The International Coffee Organization's price rules list Honduras High Grown among the Other Mild Arabicas, the group they keep apart from Brazilian and other natural arabicas. That the country's coffee is generally traded as washed is the trade's usage beyond that; the report read for this page describes grading and certification in detail and processing not at all, so nothing more specific is claimed here.

How it is graded and sold

The report lists export classes by altitude, grade and bean size. Strictly high grown, which it describes as coffee grown at higher altitudes, made up 53 per cent of export volume in 2023/24; a class it abbreviates HG and expands as high grade made up 31 per cent; a large-screen size class most of the rest. These are classes of altitude, grade and size, not flavour scores. Alongside them runs certification: Rainforest Alliance was the largest single label, on about a quarter of all exports, followed by organic. The United States and Germany are the two largest buyers, with Belgium third.

What it tends to taste like

There is no single Honduran profile that the sources support. The report describes six regions, each with its own microclimate and soils, and offers no description of how any of them tastes.

Pressures on the sector

• Leaf rust. The 2025 report forecast national incidence averaging about three per cent through August 2025. The 2026 edition puts it at 8.44 per cent in March 2026, up from 7.57, and above ten per cent in four departments. Both reports note that farms short of money for maintenance are a risk for its spread, and that an early-warning system has reported such threats since 2012.
• Credit. Many small and medium producers have little access to finance or are already indebted, which limits what they can spend on their farms.
• Volumes swing widely from year to year. The coffee institute's export series, as the attaché charts it, falls from 7.15 million bags in 2018/19 to 4.68 million in 2023/24 and 4.69 million in 2024/25.
• Meeting the European Union's deforestation rules, for which growers need farm-level documentation the institute is helping them assemble.