This is part of our blog series bringing to life the organic coffees in our Nespresso-compatible Eco Coffee Pod Advent Calendar, featuring entirely plastic free and home compostable coffee pods.
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Our Organic Peruvian coffee has been part of our range since we launched in 2017 and is created using the wonderful coffee grown by our producers pictured across six small farms, called "cafetales" in the high jungle of northern Peru's Cajamarca Region.
Not just a great coffee, the project detailed below illustrates why we source this exceptional coffee for reasons beyond cup quality.
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Award Winning Organic Nespresso Coffee Pods
You'll enjoy a smooth, balanced coffee with hints of nuts, dark fruits and cacao nibs for that morning treat or afternoon lift.
This is why our Organic Nespresso-compatible Peruvian coffee pod was awarded joint 4th in Which? magazine’s eco-friendly coffee pod test (our Ethiopian won the Best Buy!) and a Great Taste Award to, plus our bean and ground won a Great Taste Award in 2021 too.
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Meet our Coffee Growers
The coffees are produced from the catimor, caturra, typica and pache varieties and its name - Condor - pays homage to the majestic Andean Condor. Purchased direct from Coopagro at a fixed price, taking into account the cost of producing coffee, we pay what the farmers dictate rather than what we or the stock market dictate.
Simple, direct, traceable and sustainable thanks to the organic farming practices used and the reforestation project running at the farm level.
Simple, direct, traceable and sustainable thanks to the organic farming practices used and the reforestation project running at the farm level.
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Reforestation & Coffee Quality Project
Our Condor coffee is close to our hearts, being the first of 4 plastic free Nespresso® compatible coffee pods we launched in 2017.
So the project between one of our green bean wholesalers Belco and COOPAGRO – the coffee cooperative we source the coffee from – is just another good reason to continue offering this wonderful coffee.
THE CONTEXT:
Originally, the coffee producers of the Coopagro Peru mainly planted varieties of coffee with fairly low yields and poor cup quality.
To help them enter the speciality coffee market and create a more stable and higher income from their production, the project has helped introduce better varieties for commercial improvements but also an environmental reforestation project of plots of land in this largely deforested region.
WHERE?
Village: La Huaca
District: Huabal
Province: Jaén
Department: Cajamarca
Country: Peru
Altitude: 1893 MASL
TREES, BIODIVERSITY AND AVOIDING DEFORESTATION IN PERU
Belco and Coopagro’s project now successfully contributes to environmental, social, and economic sustainability of this region.
By developing better, more resistant coffee varieties results in lower production costs, an improvement in the cup profile and therefore enables them to achieve a higher price and better income
Meanwhile they are maximising biodiversity and climate change resistance in the coffee plantations through the reforesting the coffee farms and surrounding land to reduce the effects of climate change in this region, which naturally has few trees.
By planting different types of timber trees around their coffee plantations, farmers benefit from a rich source of wood while generating shade for their crops in favor of biodiversity and organic matter improvement.
The eucalyptus deglupta variety was chosen to grow at the edge of the plots to provide a wind barrier and will to provide wood for building and selling. The choice of this exotic species is due to its speed of growth and its relative resistance versus some endemic species such as cedar, which is more susceptible to caterpillar attacks.
Naturally, if the coffee farmers have a plentiful supply of wood then this helps avoid deforestation of the Peruvian jungle in and around the region so the project really has helped develop full-circle sustainable farming improvements.