About This Coffee
In 2004, a group of around 80 women from the Laguna de los Cóndores cooperative decided to branch out to form their own Association in an effort to further valorize women’s contributions to the Peruvian coffee sector and their own communities. Las Flores de Luya (Flowers of Luya) was born. As of September 2025 the group is 243 women strong and has huge hopes for the future.
Las Flores de Luya are honoring their identity and location, recognizing the strength and spirit women producers who form the backbone of this group. Though they are still firmly rooted in and supported by the wider Cooperativa Cafetalera Laguna de los Cóndores, Las Flores de Luya reflects their growing presence and leadership within the organization. Sucafina North America and NV (in Antwerp) were the first buyers of the Association’s production, and we are incredibly proud to help support this historic achievement for the coffee-growing women of Luya, which demonstrate how coordination producer organizations and other stakeholders can strengthen competitiveness, open up new business opportunities and ensure the sustainability of Peruvian coffee in the global market.
Future plans for the group include continuing to represent their communities through coffee.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
After selectively handpicking their cherry along the steep, often terraced slopes, farmers process their cherry on their own farms. Farmer use hand pulpers to depulp cherry and then ferment it for 36-48 hours, depending on ambient temperature. After washing to remove the remaining mucilage, parchment is laid in the sun to dry on small patios.
About Laguna de los Cóndores
Laguna de los Cóndores translates as ‘Lagoon of the Condors’. Farmers in Luya Province, Peru are proud of their heritage as people of the mountains, living as high in the mountains as condors fly. They speak of their ancestors, the Chillaos, as people who were made strong and “indomitable” by their lives among the clouds in the high Andes.
According to legend, the Chillaos were the first to grow coffee at such high altitudes and to discover the incredible quality that could be achieved at such heights. The members of the cooperative see coffee as their heritage: a source of energy, strength and courage for their ancestors and an integral part of social, cultural and economic life for member farmers.
Laguna de los Cóndores is focused on improving quality of life and income for its members. For the women who produce coffee for the Flores de Luya lot, they offer several projects designed to improve soil health, increase coffee quality and promote healthy, happy lives for its members. Beginning in 2023, the cooperative is offering credits to members for a reforestation project designed to reforest 120 hectares in the mountains where the community lives. They also provide training on sustainable agriculture and share tools and techniques with members about how they can cultivate coffee more sustainably. Finally, they cater to the health and well-being of their members through a project on food security that trains members on growing organic gardens, creating organic fertilizers and improving family nutrition.
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.