Through the Lens: A photographer's observations of Kingdom Growers

The coffee fields were still vast and beautiful. The children were still curious about visitors. But for James Townsend, something had changed in Honduras since his last visit. The people seemed different.“They seemed more excited,” he said, describing Cultivadores del Reino farmers. That’s the cooperative from which Kingdom Growers buys its Honduran coffee.James is a photographer and videographer and the owner of Townsend Photography and Film in Forney, Texas. In 2015, he traveled to Siguatepeque, Honduras, with us and photographed the coffee fields and the farmers who cultivated them. His images dot our website, linking faces and landscapes to the Kingdom Growers narrative.In February, James flew back to Siguatepeque and captured the continuing story of Cultivadores del Reino. There, surrounded by vast mountains and tiny villages, he caught up with a group of farmers who had grown even more passionate about their work.“It was just neat to see them get excited about their product and the things they were growing,” he remembered.And this passion translated to their relationships with each other. The cooperative members took care of each other through family troubles and farming difficulties.James encountered a father whose child had just died and a farmer whose wife lay ill while his coffee cherries waited in the fields, ripe and unpicked. The photographer watched other cooperative members support these two, put their arms around them, and pray hard. James witnessed a family.“They all came together and provided for each other and took care of each other,” James said.And that touched him. The members of Cultivadores del Reino, he said, cared about profits—but they cared more about people. When they prayed, they talked to God more about each other than about their crops.The cooperative had grown stronger because the people had grown closer. And James felt blessed to capture those relationships on camera.