About This Coffee
Esgar Delgado Torres is a member of the COOPVAMA cooperative in Peru’s northern Cajamarca region. His farm “Los Cedros” lies in the El Huaco community of the Huabal district. Coffee producers in Peru often cultivate coffee at impressive altitudes. Quite often, you will come across farms above 1800m in the country’s countless mountains.
Cooperativa Valle del Marañón is one of the four FTO certified cooperatives from the Cajamarca department. Proyecto Especial Jaen San Ignacio y Bagua (PEJSIB) created this cooperative as part of a larger environmental preservation project. The cooperative currently has 350 coffee producing members. Coffee producers at the higher altitudes here (1800 – 1900m) cultivate the high-quality Typica, Caturra and Pache varieties. Each producer has his own processing unit with depulping machine, fermentation tank, washing tank and water recirculation system.
Cultivation
Esgar cultivates Caturra and Pacas varieties. All harvest is done by hand on the steep slopes. While it is not the most efficient way of harvesting, it sure is the way to ensure the quality of the production.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
Esgar's farm has its own small manual pulping unit and fermentation tank. He ferments his coffee for 18 to 22 hours. Fermentation times can vary according to the temperature. Warmer days or nights speed up the fermentation process. After fermentation, the coffee is washed. Edgar’s farm also has its own parabolic drier with raised beds inside. This structure protects the parchment from rainfall while it is drying. The parchment dries for 12 to 15 days until it reaches 12% moisture content. Then COOPVAMA takes further care of selling his coffee.
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.