Since we couldn’t travel to Peru this year for our annual visit, we asked our partners at Finca Churupampa and Valles de Cafe cooperative to send us some photo updates.
This first slideshow is from the women’s committee of the Valles de Cafe cooperative. This year the women challenged themselves to grow family vegetable gardens alongside their coffee. They used funds from their coffee sales to buy seeds, fertilizers, and special agronomy training to teach them best practices in vegetable growing. One result of the Covid pandemic is that producers are making fewer trips into town to buy groceries where they might be exposed to the virus, so the vegetable gardens aim to increase their household food supply in a risk-free way.
Next up is a series of photos from Valles de Cafe cooperative and their coffee drying bed project. La Minita and Allegro Coffee Company sponsored a portion of the funds to build these “drying modules” on producers’ farms. They are composed of sturdy metal structures with three levels of drying beds, a roof, and side coverings. The roof has clear plastic panels that are variable depending on the climatic conditions of the farm (colder farms have more see-through panels to let the sun in), and the side coverings are moveable so producers can adjust the air flow on the drying coffee. These seemingly simple structures replaced coffee drying on patios or tarps on the ground, exposed to rain showers or the stray chicken. In addition to making cleaner tasting coffee, the slower drying afforded by the beds extends the shelf life of the green coffee. And the results are in the cup. This year’s coffees from the project scored better than the previous year’s coffees. Thank you Allegro, and thank you Valles de Cafe for your quality-focused motivation!
