People don't go to Peru for a beach holiday - this country is characterized by high altitude, a large amount of
precipitation per year and a significant historical and archaeological monument located high in the mountains -
probably every traveler knows its name (hint for non-travelers: Machu Picchu). Peru is also the birthplace of an
unusual national women's clothing, consisting of a brightly colored warm poncho (a cape on the shoulders that
covers the body) and a black bowler hat in the Old English style. They eat guinea pigs here. And it is also the
birthplace of one of the best organic coffees on the planet.
In total, coffee can be potentially grown on 2.5 million hectares, which are suitable for this type of
agriculture due to their climate and soil. However, in fact, cultivation is currently carried out on only 0.425 million
hectares, which is approximately 6% of its arable land. Organic coffee is grown on 0.14 million hectares, which is
33% of the total land occupied by coffee.
The high quality of organic coffee produced in Peru is known in many countries around the world. And has
been recognized with numerous awards:
• In Paris in 2017, coffee from 5 regions of Peru received as many as 23 awards;
• The German Federation of Coffee Roasters gave a gold medal to coffee from the San Ignacio cooperative;
• At the competition of the American Section of SCA (SCAA) in 2010, TM Tunki Coffee coffee was awarded
as the best organic coffee in the world.
Peru produces about 70-110 thousand tons of green organic coffee every year. Of this organic coffee, a
significant part is sold under the Fair Trade system (which we have already talked about earlier in our blog).
Moreover, the volume of Fair Trade coffee in absolute terms here is one of the highest, if not the highest, in the
world. And this actually means that local farmers in the vast majority receive decent and fair pay for their work
and, compared to coffee farmers in many other countries, live decently and have the means to modernize their
production. Fair Trade has been developing here for over 20 years — since 2003, which is one of the record
periods in the world for the development of Fair Trade in a single country.
Farmers in Peru, as in many places, are not large landowners, but individual small and micro-farms, and
therefore they unite in cooperatives to work together for the coffee industry. There is also a strong social and labor
movement here for decent pay for women farmers, so that they are paid equally to men. Having learned about
this, Peru opens up to a person as a paradise for doing business.
In all coffee regions of the country, the harvest is harvested from March to September, and the product is
ready for export after 2 months. The most coffee regions of the country are geographically inland (look at the map
for highland areas - they will all be in the center of the country, running in a long ridge from northwest to
southeast).
The total volume of coffee exported annually from Peru is about 200 thousand tons (or 3.3 million standard
bags), which puts it in the top 10 world producer-exporters in some years, but sometimes Peru falls out of the top
ten, finding itself in 11th-12th place (depending on annual global production fluctuations). And the total production
of green beans per year is more than 352 thousand tons (top 7 in the world). The closest rivals for Peru in terms
of supply volumes are Guatemala and Nicaragua. Coffee in Peru is usually processed by the dry method; the
percentage of the product produced using wet processing is small, but it also exists.
It is noteworthy that in Peru there is also a trend of making coffee from animal droppings, similar to Kopi
Luwak. Only instead of civet, another animal is used here, known as a coati or coatimundi - here it is link to
Wikipedia. Visually, it is a mix of a raccoon and a lemur.
As for specialty and regular, non-poo coffee from Peru, it has a pronounced acidity in taste and aroma,
medium body density of the drink, and muted citrus and floral notes. Coffee from Peru captivates, first of all, with
its fantastically strong, somewhat spicy aroma. Therefore, it is optimal to drink it with a medium or light roast, not
dark at all, so as not to destroy its acidic originality.
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