About This Coffee
Guersy Michael Milian de la Cruz joined the Asociación de Productores Cafetaleros Juan Marco "El Palto" (JUMARP) in 2012. He farms his Finca Fundo Don Eulalio in Gracias a Dios while taking care of his young family. He also helps the cooperative with accounting. JUMARP was founded in 2003 by 36 coffee producers seeking to make the industry more conducive for farmer success.
JUMARP has launched an impressive quality improvement program to help members continue improving coffee quality and environmental sustainability and are already well on their way to addressing coffee quality at all stages of the production process.
Cultivation
All 188 members produce certified organic and Fairtrade coffee. The cooperative invests the premiums received from these certifications in a number of important community projects, including crop renovations, a fund for education programs and the construction of schools.
One program we are particularly excited to support is their ambitious quality improvement program, which launched in 2012. Funded by Fairtrade and Organic premiums as well as through government funding and member contributions, the program aims to raise general overall cup scores to 85-86 by 2021.
They’re already well on their way to addressing coffee quality at all stages of the production process. They’ve built drying houses, manual pulpers and fermentation tanks at all member farms and helped members plant higher quality varieties. With these tangible steps towards their goal, we’ve seen marked improvement in their coffee quality since the initiation of the program. We look forward to continuing to support them as they reach their goals and produce higher and higher quality coffees.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
Across Peru, most smallholder producers use a similar household-based model of production. Farm sizes are small, and most families pitch in together to contribute the work needed – from pruning, to weeding, to fertilizing - to bring in a successful coffee harvest.
During the harvest season, coffee is selectively handpicked. This labor-intensive process usually involves the entire family. Some larger farms may hire local day laborers to help with harvest.
After harvesting, cherry is often hand-sorted to remove damaged or underripe cherries and is sometimes (depending on the family’s processing setup) floated in buckets or plastic vats to remove underweights.
Drying infrastructure varies greatly in Peru. Some farmers use covered raised beds and others have a ‘carpa solar’ – a raised drying room, often above a storage shed or even their home.
Cherry will dry for around 20 days on average and no matter the drying method will be turned regularly to ensure even drying.
More about JUMARP El Palto
Every year, we commit to buying several containers from JUMARP. We believe in the mission of the cooperative and want to support them in the fantastic work they are doing to increase coffee quality, spread organic farming practices and strengthen gender equality in their communities.
We are committed to buying JUMARP’s coffees through thick and thin, even when harvests are difficult. As a result, JUMARP members are able to depend on a certain level of income from their coffee year in and year out. This dependable income helps ensure the longevity of their coffee quality and community improvement projects.
All 188 members produce certified Organic and Fairtrade coffee. The cooperative invests the premiums received from these certifications in a number of important community projects, including crop renovations, a fund for education programs and the construction of schools.
We’re proud to support their carbon capture agroforestry project. Working with 3 other cooperatives and Café Selva Norte, JUMARP members use sustainable agroforestry techniques to protect the environment while improving coffee quality and yield.
Their ambitious quality improvement program launched in 2012 and was completed in 2021. Funded by Fairtrade and Organic premiums as well as through government funding and member contributions, the program helped successfully raise general overall cup scores to 83-84 with microlots at 85-86. To achieve this, they built drying houses, manual pulpers and fermentation tanks at all member farms and helped members plant higher-quality varieties.
About JUMARP
JUMARP was founded by José Carranza Barboza in partnership with 35 other smallholder farmers, in 2003. They created the association out of a desire to develop a new model of growing and exporting coffee.
All 188 members produce coffee certified as organic and Fairtrade. The cooperative invests the premiums received from these certifications in a number of important community projects including crop renovations, a fund for education programs and the construction of schools.
One of their program is the ambitious quality improvement program, which launched in 2012. Funded by Fairtrade and Organic premiums as well as government funding and member contributions, the program aims to raise general overall cup score to 85-86 by 2021. They’ve already taken tangible steps towards this goal and we’ve seen improvement in coffees since the initiation of the program. They built drying houses, manual pulpers and fermentation tanks at all member farms and planted higher quality varietals to address coffee quality at all stages of the production process from seed to cup.
The Mujeres Program
The Mujeres Program, named for the Spanish word for ‘women,’ seeks to improve social and economic standing for women members. JUMARP noticed that women were typically only involved in the cooperative peripherally, especially when it came to decision making. To increase women’s participation, they identified barriers to women’s active participation and then began implementing steps to get women more involved. The Mujeres program helps women develop their knowledge and skills of leadership, self-esteem, decision making, entrepreneur management and teamwork. The participants also receive sensory training and learn to roast in order to help them sell their coffee at a local market.
In fact, the project has been so successful that we’ve been invited to purchase two lots directly from female producers in Mujeres program. These coffees, which are slated to arrive in early December, are an exciting and cutting-edge development from JUMARP.
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.