Lonya Grande is a municipality southeast of Jaén in the Amazonas department, a vast and diverse part of northern Peru. Cooperativa Agraria Cafetalera Valle Alto Limitada was formed here in 2016 with the goal of establishing northern Peru's next generation of coffee growers and overall caretakers of the area's climate. Amazonas Peru’s northern Andes are lush, humid, mountainous, and are a threshold between the drier Pacific slopes and the cavernous and rainforested lowlands of the Amazon basin on the eastern side. The highlands here are broad and varied in elevation and microclimate. Coffee has had a dominant presence here for decades and the northern departments of Cajamarca, Amazonas, and Piura are well-established in the marketplace for their certified cooperatives representing tens of thousands of smallholder farmers, as well as the high quality potential throughout the region. The Amazonas region is a long and narrow one that runs along Peru's border with Ecuador south across the eastern slopes of the Andes. Coffee farmers in this region are typically small, only a few hectares each, highly diversified, and able to process coffee very well on remedial equipment at home. In addition to coffee it's common for farmers to grow bananas, avocados, yuca, cacao, corn, and berries, all for both local sale and home consumption. Youth Movement and Valle Alto Cooperative Cooperativa Agraria Cafetalera Valle Alto Ltda was originally formed in 2016, the result of a student initiative at the Universidad Nacional Pedro Ruiz Gallo. The students, part of a program called "Give Back to the Earth What It Has Given You” traveled to Lonya Grande to teach sustainable agriculture techniques to the children of aging coffee growers. After the program, in 2016, the same group decided to form a professional organization, originally titled Cooperative de Servicios Multiples Valle Alto, eventually changing the name to its current form. The guiding tenet of the group is that “young farmers represent the future of rural agriculture in Peru", that farming youth has the capacity to be more innovative, creative, dinamic, and have the potential to overcome the challenge of food insecurity in their region. Cooperative members begin harvesting cherry in March. Picking typically lasts all the way through September thanks to the high and cool mountain climate, as well as the very selective nature of hand-harvesting in which only small quantities of ripe cherry are picked at a time. Processing begins with cherry flotation in water to remove the less dense pickings. Cherry is then depulped and fermented in open tanks for 8-12 hours, washed with fresh water 3 or 4 times, and moved to solar dryers to dry for 10-20 days where it is rotated continuously.
