Peru Farmgate Mario Huaman Herrera Typica – 29803 – GrainPro Bags – SPOT RCWHSE

Coffee Background

In Peru the bulk of coffee production comes from small farms owned and managed by people who follow organic farm management practice attuned to their cultural connection with the land.  Producers typically cultivate coffee on just a few acres of land intercropped with shade trees, bananas, corn, and beans. They carefully harvest and sort cherries before depulping, fermenting, washing, and drying the coffee using their own micro-mills. While producers design farm management and post-harvest solutions to fit their needs, they also need a strong alliance to bring their coffee to the international market and earn fair prices.   

Mario Huaman Herrera’s farm is 3 hectares in size and located in the Juihuay community, part of the Yanatile valley north of Cusco city. This lot from Mario is 100% typica, which, even in Peru, one of the Americas’ last bastions of the variety, is quite rare to find. In addition to coffee Mario also grows citrus fruits, cherimoya, and granadilla (a species of passionfruit), and above the coffee plantation he has a small parcel of avocado trees. Mario employs 6 people during harvest time, and manages all aspects of washed processing himself. Coffee is carefully sorted and depulped the same day it is picked, fermented overnight in a small ceramic tank, and dried on shaded raised beds on his own property. Finished dried parchment is stored in GrainPro bags in a dry room off the side of his house until it can be transferred to a storage facility in Calca. 

Mario is a member of a newly-formed regional association called Café Orígenes. Café Orígenes is in its second year of business exporting coffee from the Yanatile region of southern Peru. After recognizing that producers in Peru’s Lacco Valley, part of historic the Yanatile/Cusco producing zone, were outnumbered by predatory local buyers and with no direct market access, the founders solicited the help of a local NGO, Andean Alliance for Sustainable Development (AASD). With financial and legislative support of AASD, along with coffee farmers from the area, Café Orígenes was created. In addition to marketing and exportation Café Orígenes also invests in farmer soil fertility and farm resistance to disease, conducts quality control and lot building to maximize differentiation for farmers, and offers full price transparency to their buyers. 100% of profits are re-invested in the organization to expand access of their services to farmers. Including post-harvest quality premiums, Mario was paid an average equivalent price of $2.84 per pound of green exportable coffee.