About This Coffee
Located atop an ancient cave where indigenous and then Spanish peoples once mined marble, Finca Los Nogales is named for the tropical walnut trees that shade much of the farm. Producers Nelio and Olga Cordova joined 7 Elements in 2019.
Cultivation
Microclimates in the Oxapampa-Ashaninka-Yanesha Biosphere Reserve are highly variable. An altitude change of as little as 100 meters can result in completely different climates and ecologies. Due to this variability, 7 Elements groups farms by location and by local ecological features to help express the unique conditions that contributed to each coffee.
For 7 Elements, permaculture is an ideology for farming, communities and business that focuses on creating sustainable, resilient systems. In the field, permaculture means an agricultural system with many intercropped species supported by organic fertilization and pest-control systems. The idea is to replicate natural cycles that are resilient and productive without any external chemical inputs. For communities, it means self-sufficiency and resilience with diversified income streams. Businesses inspired by permaculture, like 7 Elements, focus on reinvesting profit into the system for everyone’s benefit.
7 Elements promotes the “food forest model”. Farmers grow coffee, vanilla, sweet potatoes, peanuts and a lot of other plants that serve as secondary economic sources or family food sources. Each crop can also serve multiple purposes at once. Fruit trees for shade also produce food and timber. The neem tree provides shade and produces an oil that is an antifungal that successfully controls coffee leaf rust.
Farmers working with 7 Elements receive training in permaculture, cultivation and coffee processing techniques. 7 Elements provides seedlings, humidity meters (for drying), agronomic support, financing for farm maintenance, and more.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
After selective hand harvest, farmers visually inspect cherry using color-reference cards provided by 7 Elements and float ripe, red cherry. Cherry is pulped in a drum pulper and wet fermented in ceramic tanks for an average of 18 hours. The hydro powered pulper at Finca Los Nogales is run on electricity generated by a water wheel. Once fermentation is complete, farmers wash coffee in clean water and lay parchment in thin layers in parabolic dryers. Farmers rake drying parchment frequently to ensure even drying. It takes an average of 5 to 8 days for parchment to dry.
About 7 Elements
Giorgio Piracci, a biologist specializing in technologies, began working with the Yanesha Indigenous community while studying environmental conservation in Oxapampa, Peru in 2005. In 2014, Giorgio and a close friend founded the NGO (non-governmental organization) 7 Elements to both support Yanesha farmers and create a new business model that would be “a disruptive changemaker” focused on creating more even social, environmental and monetary profits.
7 Elements promotes permaculture techniques to help farmers achieve higher income security. Following the ideology of permaculture, 7 Elements reinvests surplus profits in the program for the benefit of everyone involved.
7 Elements commits to paying double the market price for coffee. As word of the program’s success for farmers spreads through communities, more and more youth are now expressing hope that agriculture offers them an opportunity for a successful future, Giorgio reports.
Giorgio’s intention is to create a new concept of quality that encompasses both the cup and the production process. “We want everybody along the chain to be empowered to feel ownership of their product,” he says. “Excellence is in both the cup and how coffee is grown and traded.” Giorgio’s vision is to scale up 7 Element’s program and continue sustainable growth. Further, he believes that 7 Elements will acts a model of sustainable success for other budding companies & programs.
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.