About This Coffee
Asociación De Productores De Cafés Orgánicos y Cafés Especiales De Amazonas (APROCOYCE) was founded in 2013 in Rodriguez de Mendoza, in Amazonas, Peru. The founding 23 members wanted to increase their livelihoods through improved coffee quality and collective marketing. The cooperative helps facilitate negotiations, enter new markets, obtain certifications and export coffee.
As the cooperative grew, so too did its recognition in Peru. By 2021, APROCOYCE is one of the largest coffee exporters in Rodriguez de Mendoza. They pride themselves in being known for producing high-quality coffees and being responsible, reliable partners.
In the past few years, the members of APROCOYCE have collaborated to build a larger warehouse space to store their coffee. The warehouse also included a quality lab where they can assess the quality of their coffees.
APROCOYCE is Fairtrade, Organic and Rainforest Alliance certified.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
Members selectively handpick and process cherry on their farms. Once picked, ripe, red cherry is pulped on drum pulpers and fermented in water for 24 to 48 hours. Following fermentation, coffee is washed in clean water and parchment is laid in solar dryers. Parchment is raked frequently to ensure even drying. It takes approximately 10 days for parchment to dry. Dry parchment is stored on member farms for approximately 10 days before being moved to APROCOYCE’s warehouses. At the warehouses, coffee rests for between 1 week and 1 month before being hulled and prepared for export.
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.