Building partnerships with indigenous communities
Peru 2006
12 December 2006
EcoTribal collaboration with Kivinaki and Mayme indigenous community coffee producers in the Chanchamayo region of Peru
The Kivinaki Coffee Producers (Ashaninka Tribe)
The first and previous batch of coffee sold through EcoTribal (and which has received very positive comments) came from 5 Ashaninka producers of the Kivinaki native Community, located in the hills above Pichinaki.
- Ruben Gonzales Erenita
- Silva Quispe Benavides
- Glicerio Maximo Pico
- Mario Maximo Pico
- Hermelinda Carlos Erenita
On August 26th 2006, Carlos Montenegro (Ecotribal Peru's General Manager) passed over the Fair Trade portion of their income from these producers' first 200k (imported by Ecotribal Ltd).
Since then, he has spent 3 months building a working relationship with this community, visiting them personally 7 times and participating in 4 formal coffee producer meetings. He has discussed with them methods of organising themselves as a producer group, the benefits of organic certification and fair trading, as well as technical options for improving the quality of their coffee product.
On discussing feedback from coffee tasting, the producer Ruben mentioned that – "the difficulty they have while harvesting the coffee is insufficient drying area for the beans. At present they use bare earth where they lay down plastic sheets (10m x 3m). Because of this, their coffee only reduces moisture content to around 16% or 15% (rather than the desired maximum of 12% to 13%)."
 
Their suggested solution is to construct a concrete patio (or tendal) of 50m x 10m. EcoTribal is researching best practice options. One alternative is the building of marquesinas (wooden platforms with tarpaulin covered roof structure).
We are concerned with issues such as
- Does a concrete tendal not bring with it a risk of contamination by concrete dust (to producer and end user)?
- Are marquesinas (maybe with clear plastic roof cover) not a better option, if more expensive?
- Should each producer have their own marquisina, or should there be centralised larger structures?
- Is this drying system too labour intensive?
The Ashaninka coffee producers of Kivinaki produce between 200 and 400 sacks a year of cafe Pergamino from the first and second harvests of the central part of each branch of their coffee bushes.
Progress at Kivinaki (and other nearby, native communities)
In September 2006, Ecotribal Peru was invited to Kivinaki for a second community meeting. On this ocassion we supplied a number of publications on how to improve coffee growing and production in order to build volume and reduce costs; and how to maximise plant health and minimise risks of infestations.
At this meeting, the Kivinaki producers began to emphasise the need to organise themselves as a coffee producers association and to extend the producer group to include other, nearby Native Communities. With this in mind, Ecotribal Peru is presently working with Kivinaki in collaborating with a number of other native coffeee producing communities in the Chanchamayo area. Most of these are in less accessible hills above Kivinaki and are said to produce an even better coffee.
The concept of establishing a Producers Association to represent and support the interests of coffee producers in the Ashaninka Native Communities was and has been received very favourably; and earlier this year Kivinaki leaders established and nominated an organising committee (it's President is Mario Maximi Pico, a native of Kivinaki).
Other communities wishing to participate include:
- Shanquibironi
- 7 de Junio
- Cerro Picaflor
- Rio Blanco
The new SANCORE Association of Ashaninka Coffee Producers was formed in early December. The President is Yeny Acosta, from the village of Shanquibironi, is an intelligent and serious young man of 25 years. The Economic and Commercialisation Secretaries are both women elected by the Assembly. If all these Ashaninka producer communities were incorporated into SANCORE, their total annual volumes would be in the region of 3,000 to 4,000 sacks (i.e. 3 or 4 container loads).
The name SANCORE is synonymous in Ashaninka language with the black ants seen working hard all day long throughout their forests and gardens.
Coffee samples from Mayme (Yanesha Trive, near Villa Rica)
The Yanesha Native Community of Mayme offers interesting possibilities. It is in an excellent coffee growing location, relatively close to Villa Rica, but higher in the hills. It currently has problems with transporting coffee off the hills because of its remote setting and to date has no affiliations with the local large coffee buyers and processors. The beans look great and we are looking forward to taste the results and perhaps working with Mayme in the future.
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