Peru La Familia

Andres Torres and his sons own and manage the 5ha farm Santa Teresa. Don Andres bought the land some years ago with the intention of planting coffee, despite the fact that at that time nobody in the area grew coffee, he managed to get a large chunk of land at a relatively good price and he began to prepare the land for planting. Since Andres bought the land as a block and it wasn’t used for agriculture prior to that, he wasn’t aware that there are no water sources within the property, a fact that now
with climate change, is causing him a lot of problems. Initially though this wasn’t much of an issue as most coffee was dried in cherry and there was enough water from the water network in the nearby town, however over the years as the population has grown and more and more forest is removed to plant crops, water has become more scarce. One of the reasons why Andres processes almost all of his coffee as natural is due to the lack of water he has available to him. Andres used to grow caturra, typica and other varieties commonly grown in Peru, until seven years ago when he participated in a government funded project to diversify coffee varieties, one of the varieties brought over to Peru was Geisha from Panama. Andres was one of ten farmers who received geisha seeds and was the only one who got them to full production some years later. The first harvest Andres processed as a washed lot, using what little water he had, but upon hearing that naturals often fetch higher prices, he decided to invest in huge drying tents and dry naturals. Since then Andres has participated in the cup of excellence a number of times, once placing in the top 10.
Andres’ family have five hectares of geisha in full production and a further two hectares recently planted and with a solid fertilisation plan they maintain an annual production of around 100 exportable bags of high quality coffee. The farm is managed by Andres himself and during the harvest period he employs up to 20 pickers at a time. Outside of the harvest period most of the work is carried out by two semi-permanent staff members.