Country Profile Peru

"As an origin of high quality Arabica coffee, the DE Foundation helps Peruvian coffee farmers to maximise the benfit from their coffee by fostering successful farmer organisations and leveraging that experience nationally."

Coffee in Peru

In Peru, the agricultural sector represents approximately 10% of the country’s economic activity, and provides work for almost one-third of the population. Coffee production is of extreme importance, as it accounts for more than a quarter of Peru’s overall exports.

The Peruvian coffee sector has several peculiarities, especially in terms of productivity, quality, transparency, storage and logistics, as it relies entirely on production by small-scale farmers, who often live in mountainous areas that are difficult to access. A relatively high percentage of Peruvian coffee farmers are members of a cooperative or association (15-25%).  Peru is currently the 8th largest producer of coffee in the world and the single largest exporter of organic certified coffee.

Challenges

Social Coherence

The coffee area within Peru is still expanding, with many ‘new’ farmers immigrating into the coffee areas. In many areas therefore, the social cohesion is not yet well developed and the organisation of smallholders leaves a lot to be desired. Organisations like cooperatives are of vital importance, - in addition to farmers using good agricultural and processing practices – because they can serve to improve the productivity and quality of coffee production.

Farm Management

Currently, as many Peruvian coffee producers only have minimal access to assistance and training in proper agricultural practices, the productivity and quality of coffee can still be improved. Moreover, there is limited technical assistance and coffee producers have scarce knowledge on farm management and lack commercial skills. Improving the farm management capabilities of these farmers will be extremely beneficial for their productivity. Besides, this will also allow the farmers to more easily obtain credits and sell their products at a decent price.

Role of the DE Foundation

2003-2010

As part of the project, many Farmer Field Schools (FFS) were established to provide training in good agricultural and processing practices. As a result, an improvement in the productivity and quality of the coffee has been one of the biggest rewards. Another important result has been the increased social coherence among farmers, which triggered producers to set up their own cooperative ''Cooperativa Agraria Cafetera Sostenible Valle Ubiriki'' (CACSVU) in 2004. All of the 300 members of the CACSVU cooperative are certified (one or more of Utz, Rainforest Alliance, Fair Trade, Organic, CAFE Practices), and export their high quality products - mainly to the European market.

The cooperative has also developed a training and extension centre (CETPRO), which is recognised by the country’s authorities. Through training of staff of municipalities and of other cooperatives to become trainers of farmers, using the interactive approach of the FFS, the project results had an impact on larger scale.

Ambitions

An ambitious challenge for the DE Foundation involves up-scaling initiatives such as CETPRO into a national and/or sector initiative. Doing so will increase the opportunity to standardise the quality of Peruvian coffee and commercialise it in a sustainable way.