Mercedes Carranza Montenegro produces this Organic & Fairtrade microlot at his farm, La Palmera, in Lonya Grande. A founding member of the JUMARP (El Palto) cooperative, he helped build an organization that now supports nearly 190 small producers through quality‑driven, community‑centered coffee production. Mercedes is part of a deeply rooted coffee‑farming family: his brothers Carloman and Ronal Carranza are also accomplished producers in Gracias a Dios, each leading their own farms and contributing to JUMARP’s mission of improving livelihoods and elevating regional quality.

Growing Coffee in Peru

Peru is made up of a wide variety of landscapes, from long beaches to high mountains, from the desert to the largest rain forest. In the north, the second highest mountain rage, the Andes, goes through Cajamarca department and converges with the Amazon, creating complex and diverse orographies and microclimates. Cajamarca’s inter-Andean valleys have hosted coffee crops for more than 200 years and concentrate almost 43% of the total Peruvian coffee production, not only because of its vast lands but because of an ancient coffee tradition that goes back to the XVIII century, when the first coffee crops were brought in and started to be nurtured by the many generations of producers in the region. Coffee has been part of their lives for so long that their inhabitants’ experiences and learnings are inextricably linked to it.