About This Coffee
Smallholder farmers in Colca, a valley in Cusco, Peru, cultivate coffee on steep, small farms. Many of these farmers have been cultivating coffee for their entire lives. They are members of ValleInca Association. Organized by Jose Prudencio, ValleInca has over 200 members and supports those members as they produce high-quality coffees in Colca. The ValleInca team has 5 agronomists who support farmers.
Cusco is a large region and collecting parchment from all ValleInca suppliers is a complicated affair. Jose and the agronomy team travel up to 9 hours to collect coffee from farmers, and farmers themselves travel up to 12 hours by mule to prearranged meeting points. Due to such vast distances and the lack of communication infrastructure, the majority of communication between producers and the association is coordinated by local radio.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
Farmers selectively handpick ripe, red cherry and process it on their farms. Since farms are small, almost all labor is done by the family. Once selected, cherry is floated to ensure any underripe cherry is removed. Cherry is pulped and placed in plastic barrels to ferment anaerobically for 36 hours. Following fermentation, parchment is washed in clean water and laid on covered raised beds to dry. Parchment is raked frequently to ensure even drying. It takes approximately 5 days for parchment to dry.
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.