THE CONTEXT:

WHERE?

• Village: La Huaca
• District: Huabal
• Province: Jaén
• Department: Cajamarca
• Country: Peru
• Altitude: 1893 MASL

THE PROJECT:

Belco and Coopagro, one of the Agrarian Cooperative from Perú who we’ve been working with for about 5 years, decided to carry out a project to contribute to environmental, social, and economic sustainability of this region. This project is called: "Plantation of timber trees and renovation of coffee cultivation".

 The stakes of this project are twofold: 
- To enable coffee producers to develop better, more resistant varieties that produce better quality coffees, and therefore better paid. 
To do this, Diego suggests the Bourbon - catimor grande variety. The Geisha variety was considered but is too fragile. 
- Reforesting the farms to reduce the effects of climate change in this region, which has few trees. 
With mainly eucalyptus deglupta > a variety that will not be associated with coffee but planted at the edge of the plots. It provides a wind barrier and there is always the possibility of selling additional wood. 
The choice of an exotic species is due to its speed of growth + its relative resistance. 
The endemic cedar, for example, has been proposed but it is more sensitive to caterpillar attacks. 

WHAT DO WE WANT TO ACHIEVE?

1. To avoid deforestation of the Peruvian jungle by planting different types of timber trees around their coffee plantations, allowing them to make use of this wood in a few years while generating shade for their crops in favor of biodiversity and organic matter improvement.
2. Renew the crop with a new variety of coffee that allows them to maintain lower production costs while improving the cup profile to get a higher prime.

THE FIRST VISIT

WHEN?

We did the first diagnostic visit from our field engineer and R&D director for Belco Colombia & Peru, Mónica Fuentes on the 19^th to the 23^rd of July. We are currently in the formulation stage of the project, so we expect to start implementation by second half of 2022.

PARTICIPANTS

• Coopagro engineers, technicians, QC team and members (growers).
• Mónica Fuentes (R&D Belco Colombia & Peru)

TOPICS COVERED DURING THE VISIT

• Objectives of the technical visit
• Status of the project
• Areas to visit and logistics
• Vocabulary
• Internal Control System
• Traceability
• Metric units used in the field
• Management of organic coffee production

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Install and geo-reference rain gauges and thermohygrometers to record rainfall, temperatures and relative humidity.
• For the coffee variety chosen they need to build a technical data sheet.
• Diversify timber trees (not just one type) to encourage biodiversity and nutrients in the soil.

Budget

• Belco USD $8,366.45
• Producers aprox USD $14,000.00

BEHIND THE SCENES

This was the first technical visit to Coopagro and this region of Peru. It was quite interesting how different words between Colombia and Peru meant the same thing in coffee production. In addition, We found it very cool and rewarding how these coffee producers are so interested in learning and knowing everything they can about specialty coffee. The varieties, the processes, the types of fermentation, the hours and ways of drying, etc. They were so eager to know and learn everything they could from us that they were very happy to be able to ask and solve any doubts they had with our visit and recommendations.

The variety originally planted in this region was Typica (known to local growers as the Nacional variety), but rust damage forced growers to resort to resistant varieties such as Catimor. Today, growers are planting varieties such as Typica, Bourbon, Caturra, Pache and others such as Gesha and Pink Bourbon, in search of better cup profiles and prices.

Women and families are involved in coffee cultivation, they find really important to be part of it as their main economical activity in this region. Jaén is considered the agricultural center of the high jungle in northeastern Peru and 90% of the Coopagro members (500 aprox) are organic.

I WANT TO DISCOVER THE COFFEE ASSOCIATED TO THIS PROJECT