About This Coffee
Founded in 2015, Aromas del Valle cooperative consists of 556 producers in the regions of Jaén, San Ignacio & Cutervo. The cooperative supports farming members and promotes the development of high quality coffees through social, economic and environmental support for members. They also support members by helping them incorporate technology and modern techniques into their processing.
In 2023 and 2024, they plan to plant 150,000 trees on member farms to reforest their lands. Shade trees help improve coffee quality by regulating temperatures and improving soil moisture and health.
Aromas del Valle also has a women’s group called “Mestiza” where female farmers can focus on trainings, workshops and implementing productivity techniques. The goal of the program is to increase livelihoods and living conditions for women through enhanced productivity and quality.
Cultivation
Members farm a total of 2,088 hectares that are planted with Caturra, Typica, Bourbon and other varieties. The harvest occurs between May an November. The cooperatives is Organic and Rainforest Alliance certified.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
Farmers in Peru usually process their coffee on their own farms using the Fully washed method. Cherry is usually pulped, fermented and dried in the sun. Traditionally, smaller farmers would use tarps laid on the ground or under the roof of their homes. Increasingly, cooperatives are establishing centralized drying facilities – usually raised beds or drying sheds where members are encouraged to dry their parchment. Some farmers are beginning to adopt these practices on their own farms, and drying greenhouses and parabolic beds are becoming more common as farmers pivot towards specialty markets.
After drying, coffee will then be sold in parchment to the cooperative. Producers who are not members of a cooperative often have the opportunity to sell on to cooperatives, as well.
Coffee in Peru
Peru holds exceptional promise as a producer of high-quality coffees. The country is the largest exporter of organic Arabica coffee globally. With extremely high altitudes and fertile soils, the country’s smallholder farmers also produce some stunning specialty coffees.
Though coffee arrived in Peru in the 1700s, very little coffee was exported until the late 1800s. Until that point, most coffee produced in Peru was consumed locally. When coffee leaf rust hit Indonesia in the late 1800s, a country central to European coffee imports at the time, Europeans began searching elsewhere for their fix. Peru was a perfect option.
Between the late 1800s and the first World War, European interests invested significant resources into coffee production in Peru. However, with the advent of the two World Wars, England and other European powers became weakened and took a less colonialist perspective. When the British and other European land owners left, their land was purchased by the government and redistributed to locals. The Peruvian government repurchased the 2 million hectares previously granted to England and distributed the lands to thousands of local farmers. Many of these farmers later grew coffee on the lands they received.
Today, Peruvian coffee growers are overwhelmingly small scale. Farmers in Peru usually process their coffee on their own farms. Most coffee is Fully washed. Cherry is usually pulped, fermented and dried in the sun on raised beds or drying sheds. Drying greenhouses and parabolic beds are becoming more common as farmers pivot towards specialty markets.
After drying, coffee will then be sold in parchment to the cooperative. Producers who are not members of a cooperative will usually sell to a middleman.
The remoteness of farms combined with their small size means that producers need either middlemen or cooperatives to help get their coffee to market. Cooperative membership protects farmers greatly from exploitation and can make a huge difference to income from coffee. Nonetheless, currently only around 15-25% of smallholder farmers have joined a coop group.