About This Coffee
Smallholder families of the Aymara indigenous group are behind the production of this delicious coffee. They grouped in a small cooperative to have better access to the coffee market. The name "Tunki" refers to the village where they grow coffee: Tunkimayo. Tunki is part of the CECOVASA umbrella cooperative, formed in 1970, which unites 10 small cooperatives in the regions of Puno and Cuzco. In total, CECOVASA represents 5049 farming families. The acronym stands for Central de Cooperativas Agrarias Cafetaleras de los Valles de Sandi.
Grouping in a strong local cooperative has many benefits for its members. It allows a better access to the international coffee market for commercialization of their coffee, easier certification, lower costs for farm supplies and access to services, to name a few. CECOVASA enables the producers to consolidate their volume and export to international markets directly, instead of going through a third party. This involves higher returns to the group and more control over what happens to the beans.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
On average, the members farm coffee on two hectares. Farming altitude around Tunkimayo ranges from 1600 to 2000 meters above sea level. The producers cultivate mainly Typica (70%), next to Caturra and Bourbon. Usually, farms keep a farm under Catimor cultivation as a safeguard against Roya, the dramatic year 2013 still fresh in people's minds. At lower altitudes, Catimor is most popular. As usual for Peru, coffee is cultivated under shade. The harvest starts in March for the lower regions, and runs up to September for the higher regions.
Coffee farming is a family business. Members of the family take care of the harvest and deliver the cherries to the cooperative's central processing center. The cherries are mechanically depulped. After pulping, the coffee ferments in small tanks for up to 20 hours. Next, it is washed and laid to dry on the patio. Once dried, the cooperative collects the parchment coffee and delivers it to CECOVASA. All Tunki coffee is kept separate from the production of other regions to preserve its prized flavor profile.
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.