This Peru micro-lot comes to us as via Volcafe through their Volcafe Way farmer support program which provides small holder producers with agronomy and business support year round with a focus on efficient farming as a business, improved yields and reduced resources & inputs. More than 250 Volcafe Way agronomists and technicians serve thousands of producers across 11 origins with the aim to promote sustainable profitability at farm level.

Wilder Garcia is a young producer based in Huabal, Cajamarca. The region counts as one of the most productive areas in Peru. Wilder owns 23 hectares of land, 16 of which he uses for coffee production. He has introduced a new tissue management system based on a two-year cycle and skeletal pruning. This means that Wilder divides his land into two blocks. These blocks are pruned on a rotational basis to ensure consistent production over the long term.

Temperatures vary between 17 and 23 °C, relative humidity between 60 and 80%, and annual rainfall between 1,900 and 2,300 litres per square metre. The climatic conditions are ideal, as the farm is located in a perfect living zone for Arabica coffee. The average farm size in Peru is about three hectares, which makes the structure of the coffee industry very fragmented. There is also generally less investment in roads and infrastructure, so transporting coffee can be slow, costly, and even dangerous.

Wilder has a mix of varieties on the farm including Caturra, Bourbon, Typica, Gesha and Java. This micro-lot is selected form the Bourbon trees and processed as a washed coffee. After the harvest, cherries are often depulped on the same day and fermented for 48 hours in hermetic tanks before drying in solar dryers. The farm produces around 720 quintals of parchment annually (1 quintal = 46kg of green coffee beans).

Volcafe Peru has its main office in the capital. The team operates two milling stations, one in Jaen and one in Lima, as well as seven buying offices, which are stretched along the Andes to cover most production regions. To ensure quality, Volcafe Peru employs 3 Q-graders and 12 quality control analysts. Our in-house farmer programme, VolcafeWay, reaches over 6,800 farmers. They are divided into three clusters, which represent three major growing regions, and are consulted by 32 field technicians. Each cluster runs through four stages, in which impact and outputs are monitored and evaluated.