Our first Peruvian partners APAVAM & CASIL

Coffee arriving at APAVAM's central coffee warehouse

Coffee Drying

Asociación de Productores Agropecuarios del Valle Alto Mayo/The Association of Farmers from the Alto Mayo Valley (APAVAM) is a coffee cooperative providing training and access to international fair trade markets for 518 families living and farming organically in the Alto Mayo Valley, part of the remote eastern Andean region.

The Alto Mayo is a national protected forest with beautiful landscapes, spectacular geological formations and distinct flora and fauna, primarily orchids and butterflies. A local highway constructed in 1985 exposed the forest and people to exploitation, and the area was overrun with narcotics trafficking, guerrillas and indiscriminate destruction of the virgin rain forest. Many local farmers replaced their coffee fields with coca crops.

Members of APAVAM live in remote areas of the forest, farming an average of just seven acres.  After they handpick their coffee, they haul it by mule to the co-op’s collection center. Risk of robbery and assault is high during this trip. After collecting and drying all the individual members’ coffee, the co-op hires a truck to haul the coffee 17 hours away to the town of Piura for dry milling and exportation.

One of the toughest obstacle APAVAM faces is the ability to purchase its members’ coffee at harvest. Without access to financing, members must wait months for the co-op to process, sell and export their coffee before receiving payment. This wait causes undue hardship on subsistence farmers. As a result, they may resort to selling outside the co-op for a much lower price, potentially making coffee production an untenable crop compared to coca. WCCN is supporting APAVAM by providing a $150,000 loan to purchase members’ coffee at the time of harvest. 

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Members of CASIL receiving training in the coffee fields

In 2001, 38 young farmers in the remote Peruvian/Ecuadorian border took charge of their future and reorganized the dormant Cooperative Agraria Cafetalera/The Agrarian Coffee Cooperative (CASIL). Thanks to their initiative, 180 small-scale farming families have access to international fair trade and organic coffee markets, agriculture training and information about the global coffee market.

CASIL has a cooperative-wide plan for sustainable management of their members’ coffee fields. The co-op’s seven agronomists visit each member’s coffee fields and provide training on sustainable pest control, ecological practices and productivity to ensure the quality of all CASIL coffee.  

WCCN is supporting CASIL with a $375,000 loan to purchase members’ coffee at the time of harvest.