About This Coffee
Felino Sánchez Bustamante moved with his wife and three children to Finca Manacaraco from Northern Peru in the early 2000s. The Bustamante family still consider the move the best decision of their lives.
From their earliest days on the farm, they noticed a bird whose song delighted them. When they learned about el ave as the species is called in the area, they decided to honor the bird by naming their farm after it’s more widespread name, Manacaraco. That way, they thought, when people were curious about their farm’s name, they would be able to learn about the bird, also called the speckled chachalaca, that graces their farm.
Cultivation
In addition to coffee, the Bustamante family cultivates bananas, beans, vegetables, avocado, caimito (star apple) and fruit trees like oranges.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
The Bustamante family remains focused on improving coffee quality and diversifying their processing methods. Cherry is selectively handpicked and then pulped in the farm’s drum pulper. Coffee is fermented anaerobically in sealed containers for 42 hours and then washed in clean water. Parchment dries in thin layers on raised drying beds. They rake parchment frequently to ensure even drying. It takes approximately 15 to 20 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.