Honduras grows the most coffee in Central America: the USDA forecasts 6.03 million 60-kg bags for 2026/27, ahead of Guatemala (3.26 million), Nicaragua (2.44 million), Costa Rica (1.20 million) and El Salvador (0.54 million). With Mexico the region is forecast at 17.7 million bags, mostly arabica, and washed processing is usual in Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico.
The USDA Foreign Agricultural Service expects Honduras “to account for nearly all the region’s growth, rebounding 500,000 bags to 6.0 million on expanding area and favorable growing conditions” (USDA FAS, Coffee: World Markets and Trade, July 2026). The washed-processing list comes from Sera and colleagues, who write that wet processing “is usually used in coffee-growing regions of Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador and Kenya”; Honduras and Nicaragua are not on it.
Table of Contents
When did Costa Rica ban robusta?
The 2018 decree that lifted the ban says robusta planting had been prohibited since 1998, under Decree 27059-MAG. It also repeals a second decree, No. 19302, published on 4 December 1989, which we have not read, so we cannot say when the first prohibition began; a 2018 Daily Coffee News report dated the ban to 1988. The primary document, Executive Decree No. 41110-MAG, published in Costa Rica’s official gazette La Gaceta No. 85 on Wednesday 16 May 2018, is headed “SE AUTORIZA LA SIEMBRA, CULTIVO, BENEFICIADO Y COMERCIALIZACIÓN DE CAFÉ COFFEA CANEPHORA EN COSTA RICA” — the planting, cultivation, processing and sale of robusta is authorised. Its recitals give the history:
- The ban in force in 2018 dated from 1998. Recital 7: “Que desde el año 1998, bajo Decreto Ejecutivo Nº 27059-MAG se prohibió la siembra de la especie de café robusta en Costa Rica” (since 1998, under Executive Decree No. 27059-MAG, planting robusta was prohibited). Article 15 repeals that decree and also Decree 19302, published in La Gaceta No. 229 on 4 December 1989; we have not checked what the 1989 decree said.
- The reason given for the 1998 decree was a pest, not purity. The prohibition was grounded in plant-health law, “al considerar que esa especie era susceptible a la broca del cafeto (Hypothenemus hampei), en una época en la que nuestro país se encontraba libre de esa plaga” — robusta was considered susceptible to the coffee berry borer at a time when Costa Rica was free of the pest.
- The reason given in 1998 expired in 2000. “Sin embargo, la Broca del Cafeto, se detectó en Costa Rica en el año 2000 eliminándose esa barrera fitosanitaria.” The borer arrived, so the phytosanitary barrier no longer meant anything.
- It was never a law. Recital 5 is blunt: “Que no existe ninguna ley que impida la siembra de café robusta Coffea canephora en Costa Rica” — no law prevents the planting of robusta in Costa Rica; recital 6 notes the only limitation was an executive decree, “instrumento jurídico no coercitivo ante un cambio en la realidad que lo motivó”. The widely repeated claim that Costa Rican law mandated 100 per cent arabica does not survive contact with the government’s own text.
The 2018 decree is not a free-for-all. Article 1 authorises robusta only “enmarcado todo dentro de una política cafetalera, que deberá ser liderada por el ICAFE”, and Article 2 tasks the Instituto del Café de Costa Rica with using every administrative and judicial instrument at its disposal to keep the two species separate through processing so that the reputation of Costa Rican coffee is protected. The recitals also record ICAFE’s finding that the regions agro-climatically suited to robusta “no competirían con las zonas dedicadas al arábico” — they would not compete with the arabica zones. For what Coffea canephora is and how it differs, see our robusta page.
Guatemala: eight regions, defined by the producer body
Guatemala’s eight coffee regions are not a marketing invention by importers; they are defined by Anacafé, the national coffee association, and published on its own promotion site as Guatemalan Coffees. They are Acatenango Valley, Antigua Coffee, Fraijanes Plateau, Highland Huehue, New Oriente, Rainforest Cobán, Traditional Atitlán and Volcanic San Marcos. Anacafé frames them in cup terms: the country’s high-grown coffees share a set of attributes, and “en cada una de las regiones estos atributos crean una complejidad especial, dando como resultado ocho perfiles de taza” — in each region those attributes create a special complexity, giving eight cup profiles.
Anacafé also records something no other origin on this page has: Guatemala’s Ministerial Agreement 606-2018, published on 17 August 2018, established the “Conocimientos Tradicionales de la Caficultura” — the traditional knowledge of coffee growing — as a symbol of national identity. Coffee in Guatemala is legally a piece of heritage.
What do washed, honey and natural mean?
Writing in Scientific Reports, Sera and colleagues define the three methods this way: in dry processing “the harvested fruits are dried with the peel (exocarp) and pulp (mesocarp)”; semidry processing is “an intermediate system between dry and wet processing systems” in which “the fruit is peeled by a machine, removing part of the pulp”; wet processing removes skin and mucilage before drying. In our reading, honey and pulped-natural coffees belong to the semidry family. Sera and colleagues add that the wet method “is the most commonly adopted method in other coffee-producing countries”, meaning countries other than Brazil; for the semidry methods Brazil is known for, see its page.
Panama Gesha, and what a panel actually found
Panama sits outside the FAS country table — its production falls into “Other” — but it produces the region’s most expensive coffee. The Best of Panama competition, whose auctions set those prices, is run by growers themselves: it is “100% designed and organized by the Specialty Coffee Association of Panama (SCAP)”, a non-profit growers and processors association, and works through “innovation and blind cupping exercise”.
Here is one measured result, with its limits: 24 coffee consumers tasting a single harvest. Ledezma Diana Batista, Sartori and Tomasino at Oregon State University collected washed Geisha from the 2023-2024 harvest across four Panamanian zones — Boquete, Potrerillos Arriba, Renacimiento and Tierras Altas — roasted and brewed them under standardised conditions, and put them to a screened consumer panel using rate-all-that-apply. Two findings are worth knowing before paying Geisha prices:
- Chemistry did not separate the zones. “Physicochemical characteristics did not drive differences across production zones.”
- Sensory perception did. “Discriminant analysis demonstrated sensory attribute differences among the production zones”, which the authors read as evidence “that terroir qualities do exist”.
The descriptors the panel used are more varied and less flattering than marketing copy: clusters of samples were characterised by citrus, nutty, herbal, floral, cocoa, vanilla and butter attributes, but also by “musty” and “fermented” aromas and flavours, and one cluster by “herbal and musty flavors, and a bitter taste”. Geisha from a famous zone is not automatically a clean, floral cup, and a study that reports its musty clusters is more use than a tasting note that does not.
The authors’ own caution: “Further research is needed to confirm these differences across different harvest seasons from the same locations and the influence of farming practices, roasting profiles, and environmental conditions.”
Varieties, briefly, because other pages own them
Bourbon and Caturra dominate the region’s older plantings. World Coffee Research describes Bourbon as “a tall variety characterized by relatively low production, susceptibility to the major diseases, and excellent cup quality”, brought from Yemen to Bourbon Island by French missionaries in the early 1700s and spread to the Americas from the mid-1800s. Caturra is its dwarf mutation, found in Minas Gerais in Brazil “sometime between 1915 and 1918”, and World Coffee Research gives it “Very high susceptibility to coffee leaf rust”.
For the species-level picture, we have pages rather than paragraphs: arabica, robusta, and stenophylla versus arabica for the heat-tolerant West African species that has become the reference point in the climate discussion. On the climate pressure itself, including the temperature band arabica needs and what the modelling projects for Central America, see climate change and coffee farming.
Coffee beyond Central America
For the other major producing regions on this site: in South America, Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador together account for 47.7 percent of world production, led by Brazil’s forecast 71.9 million 60-kg bags. Asia grows a little under 30 per cent of the world’s coffee and is 89 per cent robusta, the opposite of Central America’s washed-arabica profile. Hawaii covers the small US crop, distinctive mainly for its legal protection of place names.
Sources
- USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, Coffee: World Markets and Trade, July 2026; the next edition is due on December 16, 2026.
- Costa Rica, Decreto Ejecutivo No. 41110-MAG, La Gaceta No. 85, 16 May 2018, hosted by ICAFE.
- Anacafé, Café de Guatemala, and the Guatemalan Coffees regional pages.
- Ledezma Diana Batista, Sartori and Tomasino, “Sensory Perception and Physicochemical Characteristics of Geisha Coffee From Different Production Zones in Panama”, Food Science and Nutrition 13(12), 2025.
- Sera and colleagues, “Production and trade of specialty coffee in Brazil”, Scientific Reports 15, 2025 — processing definitions.
- World Coffee Research variety catalogue, Bourbon and Caturra.
Corrections to earlier versions of this page
The Nicaragua section of this page contained this: “Interestingly, while Nicaragua has its unique coffee heritage, it is also intriguing to compare it to Tanzanian coffee history, where the cultivation practices and flavor profiles present their own distinct narratives within the global coffee market. Both nations, with their rich coffee traditions, showcase the diverse agricultural landscapes that influence the taste and quality of their brews.”
Nicaragua and Tanzania are on different continents and the paragraph draws no actual comparison. It was written to host a link, and it is gone. Our Tanzanian coffee page is worth reading on its own terms; it does not need to be smuggled into a paragraph about Nicaragua.
Caturra is not disease-resistant. It is one of the most rust-susceptible varieties there is. The page said Caturra “is favored for its resistance to diseases”. World Coffee Research’s variety catalogue says the opposite in its one-line summary: “A compact plant with good yielding potential of standard quality in Central America. Very high susceptibility to coffee leaf rust.” Caturra is grown because it is short, which allows dense planting and easy picking, not because it shrugs off disease. This is not a trivial slip in a region that lost large parts of its crop to Hemileia vastatrix, and the FAS has just cut its Guatemala estimate “due to lower yields from coffee cherry borer insects and coffee rust”.
Honduras was described as a latecomer with promise. “While Honduras may have started a bit later in the coffee game, the industry has shown promising growth” understates it: Honduras produces nearly twice Guatemala’s crop (6.03 against 3.26 million bags) and out-produces Guatemala and Nicaragua combined in the current forecast.
Every tasting note has been removed. Guatemala’s “beautiful balance of bright acidity and chocolatey sweetness”, Costa Rica’s “silky body”, Honduras’s “fruity, caramel, and nutty notes”, El Salvador’s “citrus, honey, or chocolate”, Nicaragua’s “hints of chocolate, fruit, and floral notes” — nobody at this site has cupped any of them, and a country is not a flavour. The one set of sensory descriptors that survives on this page is quoted from a peer-reviewed panel study and attributed above.
Two historical claims are not repeated because we could not source them: that “the Costa Rican government, seeing the potential of this black gold, distributed coffee seeds free to farmers”, and that a mid-19th-century “coffee revolution” made El Salvador “one of the world’s top coffee producers”. They may be true. Neither carried a citation, and El Salvador is today the smallest producer of the five countries in the opening paragraph.
The FAQ block and the “Conclusion” heading are gone.
Also corrected: an earlier version said the robusta ban “dates from 1998, not 1989”; the 2018 decree also repealed a 1989 decree, so this page no longer rules 1989 out. It described the region’s washed coffees as “clean and bright rather than heavy and fruity” and said Brazil “tastes structurally different”, with no source. An earlier correction said the old latecomer sentence understated Honduras “by a factor of roughly two”, a figure with no defined basis. An earlier version said South America “alone” accounts for 47.7 percent of world production; that is the figure for Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador together. And it reported the Geisha panel without its size or the authors’ caution that the result covers one harvest.
