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From the source

Peru

Peru's coffee is grown mostly by small family farms on the forested eastern slopes of the Andes, where more than 200,000 families farm, most on one to five hectares. The Peruvian coffees we roast come mainly from smallholders in Cajamarca, in the northern provinces of Jaén and San Ignacio.

About 800 smallholders organized in the INPROCAFE cooperative grow at 1,250 to 1,800 meters, and our Lima Decaf comes from smallholders in Jaén at 1,650 to 1,800 meters. Farther south, in Cusco at about 2,350 meters, the Orígenes Women's Group grows one of our anaerobic fermentation micro-lots.

Altitude
1,000–1,800 m (about ¾ of the crop)
Harvest
Apr–Sep, peak Jun–Jul
Top regions
Cajamarca, San Martín, Amazonas
Varieties
Typica, Caturra, Bourbon, Pache
With Bird Rock
Mostly Cajamarca smallholders
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Shop coffee from Peru

Who we buy from

The farms, families and cooperatives behind our Peru coffees.

Cloud-capped green Andean mountains above a tin-roofed stone house, with a group of women seated in front50% 50%
Women in traditional Andean hats and bright skirts chatting on a hillside among pink flowers50% 50%
Wide panorama of hillsides planted in coffee rows under hazy mountains50% 50%
Women in hats with large coffee sacks on a dirt street lined with tin-roofed buildings50% 50%
A woman and a man waving from a path between coffee plants on a forested slope50% 50%
“A crop grown mostly by small family farms on the forested slopes between the Andes and the Amazon.”Peru

About the land

Growing coffee in Peru

Peruvian coffee grows where the Andes fall away toward the Amazon basin, in a band of steep, forested valleys known as the selva alta, or high jungle. About three-quarters of it grows between 1,000 and 1,800 meters above sea level, mostly under shade trees such as plantain and native Inga.

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Typica, Caturra, Bourbon and Pache are the traditional varieties. After a severe leaf-rust outbreak in 2012 and 2013, many farms replanted with rust-resistant Catimor types.

There is one main harvest a year. Picking begins in April and runs into September, and the heaviest picking comes in June and July. Lower farms ripen first, and the highest farms in Jaén and San Ignacio can still be picking in September or October.

A brief history

Much of Peru's coffee landscape was shaped by the opening of the Andes' eastern slopes to settlement. In the La Convención valleys of Cusco, tenant farmers who worked hacienda land in exchange for unpaid labor won their own plots when the labor obligations were abolished in 1962, and independent smallholder coffee farming took root.

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When the international quota system ended in 1989, world prices fell by about half, and conflict in the central forest damaged cooperatives and displaced communities. Small farmers organizing again drove the recovery: the number of coffee cooperatives grew from 12 in 1996 to more than a hundred. Peru is now among the world's leading producers of certified organic coffee, and coffee production has shifted north toward Cajamarca, San Martín and Amazonas.

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