About This Coffee
Nahyegsin Peña is a young producer in his late twenties who’s improving specialty coffee cultivation on his farm, Finca La Piria. Nahyegsin has been focused on specialty coffee production since the beginning and is proud to cultivate coffee in the town of Balcones in the Cajamarca region.
Cultivation
Nahyegsin is dedicated to managing his farm, Finca La Piria with the utmost care. He does a good job of handling shade, pruning, controlling pests and fertilizing three time per year.
Soil on the farm is nutrient-rich with a high presence of organic matter. Nahyegsin cultivates Marsellesa, Parainema, Caturra and Bourbon coffee varieties. The trees are, on average, about 5 years old. In addition to coffee, he also cultivates Inga trees for shade.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
Nahyegsin selectively handpicks ripe, red cherry and processes it on his farm the same day. Cherry is pulped and then fermented for 16 hours. Following fermentation, coffee is washed in clean water and parchment is laid on raised beds to dry. Nahyegsin rakes parchment frequently to ensure even drying. It takes approximately 12 to 15 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.