Chirinos Cooperative - Peru

Chirinos is the Peruvian cooperative behind both of our Certified Organic coffees — Augusta's Organic Breakfast and Camila's Organic. It sits in the San Ignacio province of Peru's Cajamarca region, in the far north of the country near the Ecuadorian border.

Quick Facts

  • Origin: Peru
  • Region: San Ignacio Province, Cajamarca
  • Cooperative: Chirinos, established 1968
  • Members: 867
  • Altitude: 1,200–2,200 meters above sea level
  • Varieties: Typica, Bourbon, Caturra, Pache, Catimor
  • Process: Washed
  • Certifications: Fair Trade, Organic
  • Harvest: August–November
  • Relationship: Direct trade, sourced through Sustainable Harvest

The Cooperative

Chirinos was established in 1968 by 36 coffee producers who wanted to reach international specialty markets rather than sell into the commodity chain. The group came together under federal policies encouraging cooperatives as a way to improve socio-economic conditions in Peru's northwestern communities, which had historically been overlooked by the state.

That support did not last. In the 1990s, a change in administration brought in laws favoring large business, and cooperatives like Chirinos suffered badly. What carried the group through was its own solidarity — members chose to reorganize rather than dissolve, and under new leadership the cooperative committed to sustainable agriculture as the route to better coffee and better prices. It worked. Today Chirinos has 867 members and a reputation in Cajamarca for agricultural ingenuity and reliability.

Organic Farming, Practiced Seriously

Chirinos holds both Fair Trade and Organic certification, and the organic side is not a paperwork exercise. Members fertilize using only organic inputs they largely make themselves — compost, worm bins and guano. Plagues and pests are controlled naturally, without pesticides or herbicides, which is one of the hardest problems to solve in high-quality organic coffee production.

Each producer group works with an experienced agronomist who provides technical support specifically in organic production and quality control. The cooperative also uses an innovative composting method called gaicashi, developed by Colombian agronomist Edgar Blandon, for drying and mixing organic material into a potent natural compost. It represents some of the best thinking in compost management anywhere in the coffee world.

Harvest and Processing

Coffee is hand-picked by cooperative members and their families during the August to November harvest, then washed-processed and dried. Growing between 1,200 and 2,200 meters, the cherries mature slowly, which builds the density and sweetness that show up in the cup as milk chocolate, nougat, honey and citrus.

What We Roast From Chirinos

Chirinos supplies both of the Certified Organic coffees in our Family Line:

  • Augusta's Organic Breakfast — a medium roast with cherry, citrus and milk chocolate. Balanced enough for drip or press pot, and good as espresso or iced.
  • Camila's Organic — a medium-dark roast with dark chocolate, plum and baker's spice. Our go-to organic espresso.

Harvest cycles and availability vary from year to year, so we occasionally rotate in Certified Organic coffee from the Union of Small-Scale Producers (UPC) in Huehuetenango, Guatemala for these same two roasts. Both cooperatives farm organically and both are long-standing partners.

Our Relationship

We buy Chirinos coffee through Sustainable Harvest, a Portland-based, B Corp certified importer and one of the trusted partners we work through when we can't get to a farm ourselves. That is part of how our direct trade model works: where we can, we visit the farm and set prices with the grower face to face; where we can't, we buy through importers who hold themselves to the same standard on producer pricing and transparency.

Nossa Familia is a Certified Organic handling facility under Oregon Tilth, which means the organic chain of custody on Chirinos coffee is verified from the green beans we buy all the way through roasting and packing — not just at the farm gate. We're also a Certified B Corporation.

Meet the rest of the farms and cooperatives we buy from.

Producer information and photography credit: Sustainable Harvest.