Heine Brothers' Coffee Newsletter

Visiting Peruvian Farmers- A Travelogue from Gary

In January, I traveled to Peru to visit with coffee farmers from around Central and South America and visit one of the coffee cooperatives there that grows coffee for us. Ten years ago, Heine Brothers' Coffee co-founded Cooperative Coffees, which buys fair

Peruvian children pose for a photo.

trade, organic coffee directly from cooperatives of farmers in the growing countries. One of the benefits of being a member of this organization is that the fair trade premiums we pay (and the fair trade coffee our customers purchase) help fund the expenses of coffee farmers to travel with us when we visit the growing countries. This enables them to meet other farmers and share ideas, stories and new technologies for improving their coffee growing and processing. Many of these farmers have never traveled outside their own countries. As a result of these developing relationships, we (and you!) are able to directly affect improvements in coffee quality and the day to day life of these farmers and their families.

Gary, folks from Cooperative Coffees and Pangoan farmers in Peru.

We met in Lima for a day and met around the table to discuss fair trade and other grower issues. One of the things we were able to see clearly together is how many people and organizations are in the coffee chain from grower to cherry pickers to coffee processors to get the beans ready for export, the warehouse owners who stockpile the coffee before it's milled, the mill owners, the truckers who drive the coffee to the port, exporters, importers, distributors in the US and then the beans get to the roasters and then to our customers. It's a complex process and many people have to do their job really well along the way to get us that fantastic cup of coffee we love every day.

After our meeting in Lima was over, we traveled for 12 hours by bus over the Andes (the highest paved road in the world) and down into the Amazon Basin for our visit to the Pangoa Coffee Cooperative. Pangoa is a tiny village in the foothills where coffee and cacao and pineapples are grown for export. The cooperative is very well organized and has a couple of coffee processing technologies that were advanced for most of the farmers who traveled with us there. They have a compost program they are getting started where they use many of the materials from their farms - plant waste, ashes, rice hulls, food waste - to mix together and create a powerful soil nutrient that is transforming their growing and increasing their yields.

They also ha

Coffee-drying hut.

ve built 400 square foot huts covered with a roof and plastic sides where they dry their coffee beans on layers of shelves. Drying coffee is one of the most important steps in coffee processing where the beans have to be dried quickly and evenly to insure great flavor. Typically in the growing countries, coffee beans are grown outside on patios open to the weather. If it rains, the coffee has to be wrapped in plastic. At night, to protect the beans from dew, the beans are wrapped in plastic again. If there's too much rain during drying times, the beans can't get dried quickly and evenly which can ruin the coffee for export. So by creating these drying huts, the coffee can be dried 24 hours a day, seven days a week until it's ready. This speeds the drying and insures a better quality bean. Several of the farmers planned to bring this idea back to the cooperatives in their own countries to implement.

The Pangoan farmers we visited were thr

A farmer against the background of Peru's lovely landscape.

illed to have us there. Very few coffee buyers visit them. We visited many farms and toured their fields and facilities - we drove in the beds of trucks back rough rural roads and then hiked back into the fields and farms to see the coffee trees that were filled with green coffee beans. We ate fresh pineapple and mango and lots of potatoes since Peru is the original home of the potato. Strangely, it's difficult to find a great cup of coffee in most growing countries - the best coffees are exported and the poorer quality beans stay home for in-country use. We did have one great cup one morning in a farmer's cacao field as we ate fresh pineapple and omelets. Now it might have been the cacao pods hanging off the trees around us and the blue Peruvian sky with the mountains co

Gary and others "cupping" coffee in Peru.

vered with clouds that made the coffee taste so good. But it was a welcome cup!

We stayed in Pango for five days and then traveled back to Lima overnight for one more day of meetings. The mountain roads we traveled were washed out in the rains several days after we left so it was lucky we made it or I might still be there waiting to get out.

But that's just part of life in mountainous Peru - every so often, the roads get washed out. The country is beautiful and the people are kind - I look forward to going back.